Truth and Reconciliation Book Club
Description
Read and discuss works by Indigenous authors. SEPT. 29: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, OCT. 27: A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by Alicia Elliott, NOV. 24: Glass Beads by Dawn Dumont.Additional Information
This program is an in-person program. Please do not attend if you are feeling unwell. Masks are encouraged, but not required.
September 29 - The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline: In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."
October 27 - A Mind Spread Out On The Ground (2019) by Alicia Elliott: In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation, and in the process makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long battle with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft Dinner to how systemic oppression is directly linked to health problems in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott provides a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future.
November 24 - Glass Beads (2017) by Dawn Dumont: These short stories interconnect the friendships of four First Nations people — Everett Kaiswatim, Nellie Gordon, Julie Papequash, and Nathan (Taz) Mosquito — as the collection evolves over two decades against the cultural, political, and historical backdrop of the 90s and early 2000s.
Further Reading:
1. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action:
When
Oct 27 2021, 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Where
Albert Branch, Albert Branch
Event Type
Indigenous
Topic
Book Clubs