Canadian author Fred Anderson’s powerful new memoir, Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal, will be launched on May 8, 2025, at A Different Booklist in Toronto. Co-hosted by Baraka Books and the iconic bookstore, the event promises an evening of reflection, resilience, and remembrance—spotlighting the enduring legacy of Black activism from the 1960s to today.

Eyes Have Seen chronicles Anderson’s early life in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he came of age during the oppressive Jim Crow era. Through lyrical, uncompromising prose, Anderson paints vivid portraits of the people and places that shaped him—from the close-knit Newman Quarters community to the civil rights frontlines that defined his teenage years.

At just 15, Anderson joined the Civil Rights Movement, placing himself at the heart of historic moments like the Mississippi Freedom Summer and later the anti–Vietnam War protests.

Forced to choose between war and conscience, he fled to Canada as a draft resister, a journey that connects deeply with themes of displacement, resistance, and freedom.

“Eyes Have Seen is not just a memoir,” says one early reviewer. “It’s a lens into a past America still grappling with itself, and a Canada that offered refuge but also required redefinition.”

Once in Montreal, Anderson’s voice as a writer found fertile ground at Sir George Williams University, where he later received the Board of Governors Medal for Creative Expression in Literary Arts. Since then, he has become a vital contributor to Canadian literature, amplifying stories that history often neglects.

This book launch is more than a reading—it’s a homecoming of memory and a call to recognize how history lives within us.

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