Star in Their Eyes

A sequel is hard to pull off. The Odyssey, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Godfather Part II, and The Dark Knight succeeded. But Caddyshack II bombed, as did Blues Brothers 2000. Everybody was thrilled at the prospect of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman only to be disappointed that it was no To Kill a Mockingbird. Nobody asked for Jaws: The Revenge, Basic Instinct 2, Speed 2: Cruise Control, or Zoolander 2, and nobody liked any of them.

Elbows Up! Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance is that rare contemporary sequel that cuts the mustard — perhaps not spectacularly but amply enough. It certainly won’t meet the sad fate of Opposing the System, Charles A. Reich’s follow‑up to his big hit The Greening of America, a Baedeker to the passion-charged 1970s; a quarter century later, Reich’s ideas got little attention. As the second act to...