update!

Oh god, it's been a really LONG time since I last updated this blog. Now that I'm on summer holidays, I promise that things will be different.

In other news, I've read 49 books for the "50 Book Challenge", and am highly considering challenging myself to 100 books this year!

Briefly below, I'll tell you about two of the books I've recently read:

• Men and Dogs (Katie Crouch) - Men and Dogs looks at a slightly screwed-up thirty-five year-old woman, and her return home after her marriage fails. The overarching mystery of the novel is whether or not the woman's father, who vanished more than twenty years prior, is still alive. 

To be honest, while the plot was not overly original, I really enjoyed reading this novel. Crouch was able to capture the mood of the deep South effectively, and this mood resonates throughout (slightly southern gothic). It was an easy read, and one that made me laugh.  3/5 

• Back on the Rez (Brian Maracle) - This was an autobiographical account of a man's move to the Six Nations' Reservation in Ontario. Maracle examines rez politics, social structure, traditions, et cetera, while reflecting on his own life.

The book is divided into brief topic-driven personal essays, and are told in chronological order. As an English teacher, I'm tempted to incorporate some of Maracle's musings and observations into my Grade 12 Canadian English course; I feel that these essays offer invaluable insight into life on the Iroquois rez, and can help students to understand Aboriginal perspectives.   4/5

Halfbreed

My students, in ELA A30, finished reading Halfbreed last week. Their feelings about said memoir were mixed. A few felt it was "boring" and lacked "action". These students believed that Campbell's history was uneventful, and not too different from what these students have experienced in their own lives. Yet, other students found it to be depressing and hauntingly moving. These were my kids that felt Campbell's grief at the passing of her mother, and whose hearts' bled when Campbell left Smoky behind. And, finally, some others were forced to realize the price that Aboriginal and Metis communities have paid in the name of colonization. These students were stunned and horrified to discover that Metis peoples hadn't always ha status, and that their lives had been just as full of discrimination and hardship as any other Aboriginal group.  Luckily, none of them, though, regretted having read Maria Campbell's autobiography, and I honestly believe that all of them took something away from this book.

In other words, this book is a classroom hit!

As an educator, a woman, and a Canadian, I highly recommend this book. It should be taught in schools, as it helps to put into perspective the hardships that marginalized populations faced. It also provides students with invaluable history about the Metis peoples, and, furthermore, a way of life that has since vanished. As a female, one can identify with the womanly issues that Campbell faces, such as maturation, pregnancy, and domestic violence. This book is a feminist call-to-arms, and demands that women abandon their blankets of shame just as all minorities should abandon their blankets of shame too. As a Canadian, I felt that this book was a wake-up call to me, and forced me to realize that Canada is not quite the just country that Canadians like to believe it is. Read this book!

5/5

Information:

Halfbreed Maria Campbell University of Nebraska Press (1982), Paperback, 157 pages

Three Day Road

Part of the joys of being a teacher on a Cree reservation is trying to teach materials that are culturally relevant for the students, and will actually engage them when they’re reading. Usually Aboriginal stories are good enough for my students, but they also enjoy anything that has to do with trapping, survival, and humor. I try to stay away from stories that deal with domestic violence, because, quite frankly, for most of these kids, they’ve already lived it and don’t want to relive it again. Anyway, Three Day Road , by Joseph Boyden, came to me as a recommendation from another teacher. He’d had tried it with his grade twelve students, and told me that they absolutely loved it. Such a glowing review, made me decide to check it out.

Ah Three Day Road, despite the glowing reviews, I was honestly hesitant to read you because I believed you looked like a boring book. I thought you would be filled with endless prattle about the land and cheesy Cree dialogue. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to relate to anything being told, and that you would be a complete and utter waste of my time. Lucky for both you and me, my predictions were wrong: you are truly an amazingly powerful and intense novel.

The story is told in a non-linear format, circular in nature, and is built off of the structure of traditional Aboriginal stories. Reading it is like taking a walk in the woods  - you start somewhere, and then you meander, and, in the very end, you return to where you started; however,  you’ve changed a little and the environment around you has changed a little too. You’ve become a slightly different person in those moments of awareness.

This novel surrounds three characters: Niska (a Cree medicine woman), Xavier Bird (Niska’s nephew, and a returning war hero), and Elijah Whiskeyjack (the trickster of the tale and Xavier’s best friend). In the first storyline, Niska is recalling her life while nursing the war-wounded Xavier. She speaks of assimilation, and the struggle of her people and herself to keep  culture and independence alive. Her story is tinged with sadness, and the awareness that the old way of life is dying (which relevant on reservations even today). In the second storyline, the wounded Xavier is remembering his experiences during World War One, and how the war affected both he and Elijah differently. This storyline, in my opinion, was the most memorable and also most horrific, as it dealt with a descent into madness and brought the witiko myth to life. Both Xavier and Elijah are portrayed as flawed individuals during World War One, whose surroundings cause them to do things that they would have never thought possible in the bush before. Throughout the novel, Boyden does an excellent job at maintaining the unique individual voices of each character, and thus is able to create characters that seem like living breathing people.

Boyden has done his research here. First, The horrors of World War One are portrayed accurately, and his descriptions of the lice, mud, disease, and madness are unforgettable. Reading it, I felt like I was actually experiencing a first-person account of trench warfare.  The imagery used burned itself into my brain, and there are some scenes I doubt I will ever forget even if I never read this book again. Second, not only has Boyden done an accurate portrayal of World War One, but he has also done a magnificent job of incorporating historical figures from the Cree people into this novel. For example, Niska’s father is modeled after Jack Fiddler, a famous shaman and witiko killer that died in police custody. As another example, Xavier and Elijah were inspired by World War I heroes Francis Pegahmagabow and John Shiwak, and it is easy to see these men portrayed in the novel’s main characters. Third, the Cree language is used as part of the story, and the title of each chapter named in Cree, helps to unlock a deeper meaning to the stories being told. Fourth, the information about residential schools, while disturbing, is also truthful, and helps to remind the reader of the atrocities that Aboriginal peoples suffered at the hands of both churches and the federal government. In my opinion, it is hard to find novels better-researched than this one.

So yes, I did love this book, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it and teaching it to my students. I feel that this book has a lot to offer to Canadians, whether they be Aboriginal or not. I feel that I will always be returning to this book, like a walk in the woods, and each time I read it again, my perception will shift, and I’ll become a little more aware of everything.

5/5

Information:

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Canada; Seventh Impression edition (May 6 2008)
• Language: English

Halfbreed

I've started a literature study on Halfbreed with my students. I love this book (and I'll post a review of it too, I promise), but it's a little strange teaching Aboriginal students about the products of white assimilation and structural violence in Canada. There's a little bit of my own racial guilt going on, I suppose.

I hope my students take a lot away from reading this book. It will tell them a lot about the history of the Metis, and the history of their own province. They'll learn about injustice and tragedies, and I suspect they'll recognize many of Campbell's problems in their own lives. I also want them to become empowered to speak out against assimilation and colonization, and to question their own role within Canadian society. I want them to dig deeper, and to emerge from this literature study with a deep awareness.

Poetry Break

Yesterday, I exposed my students to this and powerful beautiful poem by Sharon Olds:

Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941

That winter, the dead could not be buried.
The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,
the coffin wood used for fuel.  So they were covered with something
and taken on a child's sled to the cemetery 
in the sub-zero air.  They lay on the soil,
some of them wrapped in dark cloth
bound with rope liek the tree's ball of roots 
when it waits to be planted; others wound in sheets,
their pale, gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons that will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming undone, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a cloak, a hand reaching out 
with no sign of peace, wanting to come back
even to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
even to the icy winter, and the siege.

It made them think of the influenza epidemic of 1919, and how stories related to that tragedy      are handed down in families. Of how bodies weren't placed in coffins, but merely

placed in a shroud. Bodies taken away to an island for an anonymous remembrance.

After reading said poem, one my students asked, "Alexis, do you like death like a lot?" I had 

to think for a moment (because I had made them read The Black Cat, Do Not Go Gentle, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, and The Cask of Amontillado)  to think about my

 response. I realized that I had picked poems/short stories that relate to death because death 

poetry and short stories usually have a lot of figurative language in them.  This makes it easy for students to analyze for literary devices (oh metaphor!). Furthermore, death is a universal theme, of which everyone can relate. Reading about death, quite frankly, makes one think about their own personal experiences, and usually forces students to think critically about the poem or 

short story at hand.

And there, my dears, is my story.