The New Westminster Public Library is pleased to have New Westminster author JJ Lee talk about his new book on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m.
Nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, The Measure of a Man is part personal memoir, part social history of the suit, but it is also about fathers and sons and learning what it means to be a man.
Trained in design and architecture, JJ Lee has also worked in journalism, writing the menswear column for the Vancouver Sun and broadcasting a weekly fashion column for CBC Radio in Vancouver.
According to his biographical note, at the CBC he has worked as a writer, contributor, comedy performer, reporter and producer for such programs as Basic Black, Out Front, Richardson's Roundup and Ideas, for which he prepared the radio documentary on the social history of suits that inspired this book of the same name.
Suits featured prominently in JJ's father's life. It was JJ's decision to stop ignoring his late father's suit at the back of the closet and alter it for himself that creates the starting point for his narrative.
He explores his childhood growing up in Montreal and his troubled relationship with his father, who was charismatic but who destroyed the family with his alcohol abuse.
As his father's fortunes waxed and waned, so did the quality of his suits.
Woven through his family history and the history of the suit, is JJ's account of his own ups and downs during the year he spent as an apprentice at Modernize Tailors - the last of the great Chinatown suitmakers in Vancouver.
Under the guidance of his octogenarian master tailor, he learned invaluable lessons about life.
The Measure of a Man may not have won the GG (given to Charles Foran for Mordecai: The Life & Times), but it wins our hearts. The New Westminster Public Library is at 716 Sixth Ave. and is wheelchair-accessible.
As space is limited, preregister for the talk at 604-527-4667.
