As an English literature student desperately trying to fulfill the requirements for my major, I find myself reading all the time. However, I hardly get the chance to choose what I read. This past summer and into the winter break, I found myself taken with Canadian Indigenous women’s literature. A professor once asked my class, “How do you tell the history of people who have been silenced and persecuted?” Her answer was through creative writing. When reading works by Indigenous women in Canada, I have been lucky to hear the power of this type of storytelling again and again. Here is my list of recommendations:
The Break by Katherena Vermette
The Break centres on a violent act committed against a young Métis girl in a snowy field in North Winnipeg. Vermette tells the story of this horrific event through the voices of the women in one family, a police officer, and a young girl who has just been released from a juvenile detention center. There are no good characters and no bad characters in this story. Rather, Vermette explores the complexity of each character, establishing the hurt that propels the criminal, and the guilt that permeates the bystander. Vermette takes her readers on a journey through the lives of her characters culminating in a ceremony far away from the scene of the crime, demonstrating the ability of tradition as a method of connection. This novel, while shrouded in violence, displays the strong bonds of family and womanhood as modes of reconciliation and healing.
Read this book if you: want to read about how communities work together to overcome historical traumas; want to read a book from the perspective of many women that discuss the intercommunity violence between Indigenous people in Canada; want to read a fantastic, thrilling, and emotional crime fiction book.
Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
The Son of a Trickster series by Eden Robinson (author of Monkey Beach) is a lively coming-of-age story. While exploring the dark issues of alcohol and drug addiction, criminal activity, and poverty, Robinson constructs a world centred around familial love and magic. When 16-year-old Jared, who lives in the Haisla Nation in Kitamaat Village, British Columbia, begins to feel as though his life is out of control, he starts to hear ravens speak. In this novel, readers are brought into Jared’s seemingly chaotic life; however, we are comforted by his compassionate sensibilities and the relationships he forms with those around him.
Read this book if you: like shape-shifting walls that lead to alternate dimensions; love fireflies; love Eden Robinson.
This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
This Accident of Being Lost is a collection of short stories and poems that communicate the experiences of a contemporary Indigenous woman. Simpson writes about her colonized body and reclamation. She writes about “stealing back redbodies,” and “stealing back ourselves.” In this work, the narrator is simultaneously stealing and being stolen; displaying strength and aggression in taking, and vulnerability and fragility in being taken. Simpson, in interviews, has stated that she includes Ojibwe words in her works because she wants her community to know that they are the people for whom she is writing. This is prevalent in This Accident of Being Lost and forces the reader to either use an online dictionary to learn some Ojibwe words, and/or acknowledge the lack of understanding we have of the people whose land we colonized. In the many voices of the various poems and stories, Simpson becomes intimate with her reader, expressing the complexities of her identity, her strength as a female Indigenous activist, and at the same time her vulnerability.
Read this book if you: enjoy stylistic shifting between prose, poetry, and song lyrics that discuss impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people in Southern Ontario; want to experience a blend of humour, anger, and love.
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