No Crystal Stair is a novel, published in 1997, by Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 author Mairuth Sarsfield

Mairuth Sarsfield

Mairuth Hodge Sarsfield, CQ is a Canadian author, activist journalist, researcher and television personality.Sarsfield has had a long, varied and distinguished career. Born and bred in Montreal, she has worked as host for the CBC, CTV, and TV Ontario...

.

No Crystal Stair was one of the selected novels in the 2005 edition of Canada Reads

Canada Reads

Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" competition organized and broadcast by Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC.-Overview:During Canada Reads, five personalities champion five different books, each champion extolling the merits of one of the titles. The debate is broadcast over a series...

, where it was championed by Olympic

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 fencer

Fencing

Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...

 Sherraine MacKay

Sherraine MacKay

Sherraine Schalm, formerly Sherraine Schalm-MacKay , is a top-ranked Canadian Olympic épée fencer, World Cup medal winner, elementary school teacher and author. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa...

. The title is a reference to the line "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

's poem "Mother to Son."

Plot introduction

No Crystal Stair is a coming-of-age story set in the Little Burgundy

Little Burgundy

Little Burgundy is the informal name of a neighbourhood in the Sud-Ouest borough of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.-Geography:...

 district of Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 during the 1940s.

Plot summary

Widow

Widow

A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed...

 Marion Willow works at two jobs to raise her three daughters properly. Fighting racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 and sexism

Sexism

Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...

, Marion schools her girls in manners, English poetry

English poetry

The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...

 and the need for an education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

; her elegant neighbour and rival (both women are in love with railway porter

Porter (carrier)

A porter, also called a bearer, is a person who shifts objects for others.-Historical meaning:Human adaptability and flexibility early led to the use of humans for shifting gear...

 Edmund Thompson) teaches the children the ways of the street and their black cultural heritage.

Major themes

Two themes in the novel run through No Crystal Stair: passing as white and surviving as black. Sarsfield recounts a story about the desire to survive, all the while depicting the cosmopolitan Montreal of the 1940s, a city inhabited by jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musicians, socialites, artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s and gangster

Gangster

A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....

s.