Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

 Just finished: In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott

I finished this the day I posted about it last week. It was a tough read. Hopeful, in the sense that she gets clean and survives to write the memoir, but it's basically a long trauma conga line until then.

Currently reading: From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way by Jesse Thistle.

A theme is emerging in my reading so far this year (this is because a colleague loaned me a big stack of books; it's not by accident), and that theme is narratives of Indigenous trauma and survival. This is another memoir, and like the last one, is a good book with an awful title. (Publishers. Stop that.) Thistle's story is remarkable in its gruesomeness; his descriptions of homeless life, the illness and injuries one accumulates as an addict, and the brutality of daily life, is visceral and spares no detail, to the point where it's given me some nightmares. 

A cynical part of me wonders at the prevalence of trauma memoirs by Indigenous authors that are, I think, marketed towards a white audience. Knott's book explicitly says, "this is for us, not you," but...is it? I don't know. I'm probably too decaffeinated to really interrogate this. Like obviously the authors get something cathartic out of it—I hope, otherwise yikes—and there's an implicit healing in that these are always recovery narratives about reconnecting with one's community. But I also wonder if it's not somewhat of a ritual for CBC intelligentsia types to use these books, with their emphasis on the individual and on lateral violence, to absolve themselves of responsibility.

(She says, as a CBC intelligentsia type.)

Anyway. It's excellent. It's very powerful. It's a giant trigger though.

Comments

[wlach]

> But I also wonder if it's not somewhat of a ritual for CBC intelligentsia types to use these books, with their emphasis on the individual and on lateral violence, to absolve themselves of responsibility.

I think you're really onto something here -- I think it's a tendency of ours to equate feeling bad about colonialism with taking action to dismantle it. Feeling bad is most likely part of a process of decolonization, but only a first step. We shouldn't be content to stay there.

I didn't mention it last night, but I ran into this over the weekend and it's been rattling around in my head ever since:

http://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-complex/

I think it's aimed at an American audience, but I think most of it is applicable to Canada as well.

Was really good seeing you last night!

[sabotabby]

I think you're really onto something here -- I think it's a tendency of ours to equate feeling bad about colonialism with taking action to dismantle it. Feeling bad is most likely part of a process of decolonization, but only a first step. We shouldn't be content to stay there.


Yes, I think that's true. It's true broadly of the left (which is why Facebook shares feel like "I'm doing a thing") and it's true particularly in Indigenous issues, where we're all the beneficiaries of so much suffering and horrors, and where the root causes are so deeply entwined with our identity and country. And guilt and pain is exhausting, and feels like doing something, when it obviously isn't.

I remember that article floating around. I've never felt comfortable with the label "ally," and I guess that's part of why?

It was awesome seeing you too!

[kore]

Hmm, there's a kind of parallel with recovery books in general -- they tend to not only focus on the redemption narrative, but also the individual effort in that redemption, without focusing so much on systemic problems like lack of health care and stigmatization and so on. But then again in a first person "I got through this" narrative there's not usually too much focus on social analysis.

[sabotabby]

These are better in that there absolutely is a social analysis and collective solutions (they tend to end with "and then I reconnected with my culture and traditions and that's what got me out of it") but...it still feels limiting and voyeuristic somehow. I also have an allergy to memoir as a genre and first-person as a POV, which isn't helping matters. But there's also the problem that the root causes are systemic but the actual trauma comes from those who are only slightly less screwed than the writer, which feels like blame-shifting on a societal level. I don't think it's coincidence that of the three I've read this year, the one that resonated with me the most was Heart Berries, where the abuser is a white male professor.

[lapinlunaire]

You know, I've thought about that before. Not about Indigenous authors specifically but POC in general. I think the weirdness comes from how it's almost expected from writers of colour, whereas white writers can write other stuff and be popular. It's like if white writers were expected to write the next Christiane F. all the time. And so many readers are weirdly condescending and gross about it, too. You never hear people talk about how ~inspired~ they were by a memoir by a white American woman growing up in fundamentalist Chirstian family, for example.

I'm not saying these aren't valid books or that authors only write them for white audiences, I think people have the right to tell their stories and have people like themselves as their target audience. It's just the way it gets talked about that really weirds me out.

[sabotabby]

I feel like I read an author complaining about this very phenomenon (I don't remember who it was or their background, but it resonated with me).

And like, they're important stories, don't get me wrong. It's just that they're not the only stories. And I'm not seeing narratives about collective resistance held up by the literary establishment in quite the same way, even though there are lots of those out there.

[minoanmiss]

I have a lot of thoughts and no sense. *reads and thinks and considers how to do some good*

[sabotabby]

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts!