Sugar Kids

A Novel

A coming-of-age novel set in the iconic nineties rave scene.

About the book

Baby’s a skater girl trying to get through high school like everyone else. Except she loves Victorian gothic fiction, experiences violent tremors, and gets visits from the ghost of her twin. Ravi never really died for her, not like her mom did last year. When Baby gets kicked out of the house for not conforming with her Indo-Canadian family’s gender expectations, everything changes. Her new, glamorous friend Delilah introduces her to all-night parties held in exclusive clubs, abandoned warehouses, and magical cornfields — the underground rave scene in 1990s Vancouver.

But how will Baby fit into this new world?

Join Baby on her wild search for belonging through the landscape of acid house, complete with extraordinary music, retro fashion, and copious substance use. Alongside eccentric DJs, misanthropic skaters, and denim-clad ghosts, Baby explores her sexual and cultural identity. A coming-of-age tale, Sugar Kids is an homage to the subcultures animating the nineties.

Fiction Race & Anti-Racism

What people are saying

Catherine Lewis, author of Zipless
“How lovingly can one be haunted? In Taslim Burkowicz’s dazzling fourth novel, let Baby take you by the hand, leading you from her grandmother’s too-sweet chai and her twin brother’s ghost into her phantasmagorical adventures in the West Coast rave scene, with its endless glitter, pink wigs, pulsating beats, and chemical highs. Populated with cobbled-together skateboards, “white people’s incense,” and cross-cultural desires, Sugar Kids is a love letter to the Vancouver of the 1990s, to transforming oneself over and over again, and to every sparkling incarnation of enchantment, heartache, and longing.”

Author

Taslim Burkowicz

Taslim Burkowicz’s work is inspired by her Indo-Canadian heritage. Favouring a sensory rich writing style while exploring social justice issues, Burkowicz has a bachelor’s degree in political science and education from SFU. She has written three previous novels. Chocolate Cherry Chai, spanning several countries, tells the story of five generations of Indian women and immigration. The Desirable Sister tackles the issue of colourism as experienced by two Indo-Canadian sisters born with differently hued complexions. Ruby Red Skies follows the journey of a woman on a mission amidst the wildfires of BC while simultaneously exploring the life of a dancer in the Mughal Empire in the 1600s. Burkowicz’s works have appeared on CBC’s new fiction lists and Ruby Red Skies appeared on Shrapnel Magazine’s “Fall Favourites of ’22.” Taslim resides with her husband and three boys in BC, where she runs, dances, reads and is chased by deadlines.