The level of passive aggression in this book and the skill with which it's wielded is truly admirable. I might sound sarcastic when I say that but I'm dead serious. It might actually be my goal in life to achieve this one day. It might have come across as trite at times, but I actually didn't mind that because ultimately it laid things out as they were and as they are, with an unapologetic point of view. And I'm glad, because Canada should be called out on our history of racism—saying "well, it's okay because we're not as bad as them" (replacing "them" with whomever you choose, usually the U.S., with whom we're most often compared and conflated and with whom we share the focus of this book), does nothing to absolve us of our own actions and policies and practices.

I can see why some people I know who read this book were uncomfortable with it or disliked it, because it's not comfortable to be confronted with these things and we react to that discomfort in different ways including anger and denial and frustration, but the book is also almost gentle in its pointedness, and while it's not laugh-out-loud funny the author still manages to inject humour into the narrative, even if it's a bitter humour which...well, see sentence number one.