num_pages: 288
description: Shortlisted for the Bressani Literary Prize  A Globe and Mail Book of the Year  A CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi. The taxi writes Marcello Di Cintio is a border. Occupying the space between public and private a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have metyet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard to the Westboro Baptist Church to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase Driven seeks out those missed conversations revealing the unknown stories that surround us. Travelling across borders of all kinds from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives arent defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylans lyrics Di Cintios subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them. Like the people encountered in its pages Driven is an unexpected delight and that most wondrous of all a book that will change the way you see the world around you. A paean to the power of personality and perseverance its a compassionate and joyful tribute to the men and women who take us where we want to go.
language: English
title: Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers
publisher: Biblioasis