Among the Lions is the story of a granddaughter learning how to chronicle a biographer. After decades of documenting Canadian literature and assuring it has a place in history, Dr. Sandra Djwa CM FRSC has taken her retirement to finish her own autobiography. Her past works having won her the Order of Canada, a Governor General’s Award and many more, she turns her focus to her own history and her own family.  As a grandmother, grandma Sandy is a quick, fearsome, gardening matriarch.Someone who calls everyone ducky, and can’t invite you in without feeding you. These two sides have stayed separate throughout her life.  As an academic, she is fearsome, quick and ruthless. Her three children and four grandchildren know only the matriarch, and the world of Canadian literature knows only the academic. Through the lens of my camera, we start to understand the union of the professional and personal sides of my 85 year old grandma Sandy. Professionally we learn of the fight she put up for Canadian Literature in Vancouver in the 70s and 80s, when literature was English, American, or not spoken of. And personally we learn about a young Newfoundland girl that “knew diddly-squat” but raised a bi-racial family in the 70s and 80s, when that simply wasn’t done. Through granddaughter and grandmother conversations, we unravel her means, motions and what led to being the person she is today.