Ms. Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer and Polaris Prize winner in 2014. She can now add author to her artistic gifts. This is a remarkable first novel. There is the often difficult reality of living in Nunavut as a young person: endless summer sunshine, the dark and brutally cold winter, and human difficulties like substance and sexual abuse. And there is a magical imaginary component, sometimes based on dreams. Ms. Tagaq’s prose is accompanied by graphic poems and a few illustrations. Highly imaginative writing.
Category: Indigenous author
Ragged Company – Richard Wagamese
This wonderful book, published in 2008, is one of Wagamese’s best. The story centres on four homeless people, two of which are Indigenous. Their street life is altered dramatically when they accidentally find a winning lottery ticket for $13.5 million: talk about “and now for something entirely different”! ‘The evocative story line weaves between the altered present and their backstories. This book has a wider scope than Wagamese’s other fine books which mainly focus on indigenous characters. The development of trust when they were homeless and how their life is altered after the lottery win makes this a story of family, how families can (and can’t) cope with stress due to altered circumstances. And spoiler alert: the ending will bring you to tears. Thanks Katharine, for this recommendation.
A Matter of Malice – Thomas King
Thumps DreadfulWater (wonderful name) is a Cherokee ex-cop trying to live a quiet life in a small town in Montana. Thomas King is a very fine writer (The Back of the Turtle, An Inconvenient Indian) so the writing is much better than the average murder mystery. King captures the world-weary aspect of DreadfulWater, how a mind can wander and then snap back into focus. Now I am going to read the first three books in this series.
Keeper n’Me – Richard Wagamese
In the tributes to the late Richard Wagamese at literary festivals in Calgary and Vancouver, several Indigenous authors said that this book had a huge influence on their lives. Garnet Raven is a young child in an Ojibway-Anishanabe community in Northern Ontario. He is a victim of the sixties scoop, essentially a kidnapping, and so grows up without any sense of being an Indian. In fact, there are some hilarious instances of his attempts at cultural appropriation. After 20 years, he is reunited with his family and begins to lean the Indian way with an elder named Keeper. It is easy to understand why this book, published in 1993, became so important to Indigenous youth. This book should be essential reading for everyone, to appreciate a way of living in harmony with the land and the important of silence, of a slow pace of life and a solid sense of humour.
Starlight – Richard Wagamese
This is the continuing story of Frank Starlight. Much of the story is quiet and contemplative, describing how to live as one with the land through solitude and your senses (sight, hearing). The result is healing and redemption, expressed in two very different lives. The story was unfinished at the time of Wagamese’s death in March 2017 but the conclusion is evident. This is just masterful story-telling, a final fitting legacy for a remarkable author.
Tilly and the Crazy Eights – Monique Gray Smith
Smith’s first book about Tilly (Tilly: A story of Hope and Resilience) was largely about recovery from addictions. This second book has Tilly driving eight Indigenous elders from Canada to a pow-wow in Albuquerque. Along the way, each of the elders has a bucket-list destination. There is both laughter and tears in this unashamedly sentimental book with significant insights into Indigenous spirituality. The spectre of residential school abuse looms in the background of some of the elders, but the story is mainly about resilience.
Amy notes; we saw her speak at the Vancouver Writers Fest.
There There – Tommy Orange
Orange is one of a group of impressive Indigenous authors introduced to me during the Calgary Word Fest. This is a superb first novel with intersecting characters assembling in Oakland for a Pow-wow. These individuals have links to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma but their Indian identity is very limited: these are urban Indians. For example, a young boy, Orvil Red Feather, learns pow-wow dancing from YouTube videos. The intersecting multi-generational story-lines can be complicated to follow sometimes because of uncertain or unknown parentage, but the culminating climax is presented powerfully. This is excellent story-telling about identity, violence and recovery, of belonging and un-belonging, loss and hope.
