Reading Wednesday
Nov. 10th, 2021 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall. I loved this one. It's fluff but it's very fun, well-written fluff, and I have zero complaints. I was thinking that it was very much what I wanted The Irregulars to be in terms of a more diverse, occult-themed Holmes pastiche, except that show was garbage and this did everything right. I may need to check out some of the author's other stuff, which sounds a bit more trashy paranormal romance that is not my thing, but this one was very much my thing.
Currently reading: Voices Under One Sky: Contemporary Native Literature, edited by Trish Fox Roman. This is another one for work. It's as variable as every anthology ever, but it's got some incredible authors. So far George Peequaquat's and Lee Maracle's short stories are the ones that stand out in my mind. Some of the poetry is also quite good.
It's interesting reading Indigenous lit from the 90s versus the more contemporary work that I normally read for pleasure. There are so many works devoted to basically saying, "I am here, I exist" that would seem self-explanatory now but absolutely weren't in 1994. I also think a lot of contemporary authors are writing for an Indigenous audience first and everyone else gets to catch up and keep up, which allows for a broader depth and diversity of themes than one gets when one has to first explain one's identity to a (presumed white) reader.
It would be fascinating to do a comparison between Lee Maracle's "Charlie" and Gord Downie's "The Hidden Path." I had been reluctant to use the latter in a class because the last thing the world needs is a dying white rock star telling the story of a brutalized, dead Anishinaabe child, but examining the storytelling differences and the reason why I don't have a box of Lee Maracle-related swag in my classroom that I didn't even ask for would be a valuable exercise for the alert student.
Currently reading: Voices Under One Sky: Contemporary Native Literature, edited by Trish Fox Roman. This is another one for work. It's as variable as every anthology ever, but it's got some incredible authors. So far George Peequaquat's and Lee Maracle's short stories are the ones that stand out in my mind. Some of the poetry is also quite good.
It's interesting reading Indigenous lit from the 90s versus the more contemporary work that I normally read for pleasure. There are so many works devoted to basically saying, "I am here, I exist" that would seem self-explanatory now but absolutely weren't in 1994. I also think a lot of contemporary authors are writing for an Indigenous audience first and everyone else gets to catch up and keep up, which allows for a broader depth and diversity of themes than one gets when one has to first explain one's identity to a (presumed white) reader.
It would be fascinating to do a comparison between Lee Maracle's "Charlie" and Gord Downie's "The Hidden Path." I had been reluctant to use the latter in a class because the last thing the world needs is a dying white rock star telling the story of a brutalized, dead Anishinaabe child, but examining the storytelling differences and the reason why I don't have a box of Lee Maracle-related swag in my classroom that I didn't even ask for would be a valuable exercise for the alert student.
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Date: 2021-11-11 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-11 01:41 am (UTC)