Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: Stories of the Road Allowance People by Maria Campbell. This is a classic of Métis literature that I had encountered in excerpt form, because if you have any interest in Indigenous lit at all, you will encounter it, but never read cover to cover before. It is very much worth reading cover to cover. Campbell interviewed Elders about their lives and stories, and transcribed it in their own words. The care and love that she took with these stories bleeds through each page, as does the rhythm of the dialect. They are stories of humour, hardship, and resistance, a reminder that what we think of as "history" is continuity through to living memory.

The choice to capture the original dialect of the storytellers is a rather famous one. The most surprising thing to me is that "he" is used as a pronoun for everyone regardless of gender. 

There's also a CD, which I couldn't play unfortunately. The accompanying illustrations are gorgeous.

Currently reading: The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. This was recommended to me awhile ago by someone with good taste in books as a "oh shit, why even bother writing when this exists?" type book. And it is. It had me from the first sentence, where a boy helps his grandmother roll cigarettes while she tells him a story about how the Moon and the Sea fell in love and had a child, who established a theatre that you can visit—only once, so pay attention—in dreams. This is the framing story for the boy's visit, where he witnesses a play acted by the child, about a revolution against an empire. The Moon, taken from the sky and imprisoned by the emperor and his sons, is released in a spectacular act of violence, and two warriors must shepherd her to freedom in order to end the family's reign of terror.

Everything about this book is perfect: the prose, the worldbuilding, the characters, the insertion, in italics, of the POV from the empire's many victims, fuck everything is amazing and devastating. I love it so much.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Ishmael has been quiet lately—only one very short chapter in which not a lot happened. I don't have anything witty to add and neither, apparently did he.

Comments

[frandroid]

> The choice to capture the original dialect of the storytellers is a rather famous one. The most surprising thing to me is that "he" is used as a pronoun for everyone regardless of gender.

Is that similar to speaking to new English speakers coming from Farsi, not knowing which pronoun to use because it doesn't quite work the same in Farsi? Hanging out with Sia was so confusing for years in that regard :)

I have an external CD/DVD drive you can borrow if you want, but it itself is an indeterminate long term long from someone else 8)

> who established a theatre that you can visit—only once, so pay attention

aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh

[sabotabby]

I think it’s similar. Michif is Cree + French, and while French obviously has gendered pronouns, Cree doesn’t.

Anyway, I’ve returned it to the library now. There’s a CD player at work but I’m lazy.