It’s time to listen. Here are six Indigenous authors telling their own stories in their own words. As human beings, we need to hear what they have to say.
As Canadians, we are all treaty people.
It’s past time, but hopefully these critically acclaimed and award-winning books help prove it is not too late.
The marrow thieves
Dimaline, Cherie
Y DIMAL (2018)
Governor General’s Literary Award 2018
In a future world ravaged by global warming, the only people still able to dream are North America's indigenous population - and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow - and dreams - means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a 15-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones, and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing 'factories.'"
The break
Vermette, Katherena
F VERME (2016)
CBC Canada Reads Nominee 2017
In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim — police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed.
Indian Horse
Wagamese, Richard
F WAGAM (2012)
Movie released in April 2018, CBC Canada Reads Nominee 2013
With compassion and insight, author Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture. For Saul Indian Horse, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he's sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displacement.
Seven fallen feathers: racism, death, and hard truths in a northern city
Talaga, Tanya
305. 89707 TAL (2017)
RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction 2018
Over the span of ten years, seven high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The seven were hundreds of miles away from their families, forced to leave their reserve because there was no high school there for them to attend. Award-winning journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this northern city that has come to manifest, and struggle with, human rights violations past and present against aboriginal communities.
Heart berries: a memoir
Mailhot, Terese Marie
971. 137 MAILH (2018)
Terese Mailhot's memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself facing a dual diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries. As she writes, Mailhot discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, re-establishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world.
The reason you walk
Kinew, Wab
971. 2743 KINEW (2015)
RBC Taylor Prize Nominee 2016
As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.
Laura Bilyea
Librarian, Mississauga Library System
No comments:
Post a Comment