Holiday Gift Guide: I Live Here

I Live Here (Pantheon) is stunning, heartbreaking, riveting. True.

Actually four books held together in an artful portfolio, each documents the stories of some of the displaced women and children in four locations: survivors of ethnic cleansing in Burma, war in Chechnya, globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi.

Some of the voices we encounter belong to those very women and children, other stories come to us through noted artists and writers -- Ann-Marie MacDonald, Joe Sacco and Karen Connelly among them.

The book is part of a project put in motion by actor Mia Kirshner, who was initially looking to fill a hole in a seemingly rich and comfortable life and possibly ended up with more than she bargained for, but certainly not more than she could chew. In a recent interview, Kirshner said that, on her travels, she “mostly met people who weren’t that different from you and me. Sure, they were desperately poor, but they were even more desperate to be heard. This project is about making that happen.”

The I Live Here Foundation can be reached online.