Leanne SimpsonRezensionen

I loved this book so much I bought it for a friend as a love letter

I wound up really enjoying this one. It is a collection of poems and prose reflecting on the life of the modern Native with ties to history. It deals with social justice, relationships, race, etc. What struck me was the simplicity of it all. The words are chosen with care as a poet might with a deeper meaning. Most of the poems are in lowercase without punctuation to drive the point home. It sat with me.

Collection of contemporary short stories written in poetic prose and focused on the Anishinaabe, indigenous people of North America located in the northern US and Canada. The author examines many forms of love, related to land, traditions, and, of course, people. Carefully selected epigraphs introduce each story. The prose includes words from the Anishinaabe language, not always translated. The stories are told from various perspectives, even from the spirit world.

The characters in these stories explore the ways they try to repair relationships with other people and with nature, attempting to overcome colonial damage that has been done in the past. I liked that it is optimistically oriented, not dwelling on prior tragedies, but not ignoring them either. It is nontraditional, creative, and moving. I listened to the audio book, read by Tantoo Cardinal. It lends itself well to audio since it is already poetic in nature and the narrators are storytellers.

I am not even sure how to describe this book other than it was a great experience to read it - I loved it all but especially the part about the Canada geese and the raccoons.

This collection was fantastic. Each story was such a complete and perfect world unto itself - but taken as a whole, it became a beautiful testimony and love story to a place and a way of life that sometimes seems to have been vanished by colonizers. I was able to find a copy of both the audiobook (read by the amazing Tantoo Cardinal) and the ebook, and I would find myself listening to a story, and then immediately going to the ebook to read it again. Each way of experiencing these stories was so rich and offered its own nuances and insights together. I absolutely savored the reading of this collection.

All the stories were so strong, but some standouts for me include:

birds in a cage
lost in a world where he was always the only one
jiimaanag
jiibay or aandizooke
she told him 10,000 years of everything
it takes an ocean not to break
caged

A fantastic collection of Anishinaabeg stories, including vocabulary throught the stories to learn a small amount of Anishinaabemowin.

Recommended by Ali

Waited too long to start this and then it was due back to the library; I will come back to it.

See also: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Quotes from Introduction/Nishnaabeg Brilliance:

It sounds idyllic, because compared to now it was idyllic. Our knowledge system, the education system, the economic system, and the political system of the Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg were designed to promote more life. Our way of living was designed to generate life - not just human life but the life of all living things. (3)

Authoritarian power - aggressive power that comes from coercion and hierarchy - wasn't a part of the fabric of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg philosophy or governance, and so it wasn't a part of our families. (4)

Over the past 200 years, without our permission and without our consent, we have been systematically removed and dispossessed from most of our territory. (4)

...Kina Gchi Nishnaabeg-ogamig, the place where we all live and work together....is an ecology of intimacy....It is relationships based on deep reciprocity, respect, noninterference, self-determination, and freedom. (8)

We should give more than we take. (9)

This is what I understand our diplomats were negotiating when settlers first arrived in our territory....I believe my Ancestors expected the settler state to recognize my nation, our lands, and the political and cultural norms in our territory. (9)

This is the intense love of land, of family, and of our nations that has always been the spine of Indigenous resistance. (9)

The driving force of capitalism in our dispossession cannot be denied. (13)

Colonialism or settler colonialism or dispossession or displacement or capitalism didn't seem complicated anymore....It seemed simple. Colonizers wanted the land. (15)

...Indigenous thought systems, intelligence systems that are continually generated in relationship to place. (16)

It became clear to me that how we live....is the transformation. (19)

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's "As we have always done" provides the reader with an intersectional analysis for a radical resurgence that rejects the colonial politics of recognition and seeks Indigenous resurgence on Indigenous terms.

There are many strengths in this thesis, including critiques of capitalism and industrialism as they intersect with the settler colonial state to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land; critiques of patriarchy and gender stereotypes, and their intersection with law (i.e. the Indian Act); and critiques of legal constructions of recognition including reserve vs urban, status vs non-status. Through these critiques, Simpson offers the reader an alternative ideology, one that prioritizes Nishinaabewin, connections to land, community and culture, and alternative modes of production in line with these concepts that allow for an Indigenous resurgence.

A weakness in Simpson's work, however, is her choice of terminology when addressing LGBTQ2S+ issues and their intersections with Indigenous radical resurgence. In discussing the very important and very real oppressions that Indigenous LGBTQ2S+ people face, Simpson chooses to use the term "2SQ". This inadvertently excludes those who do not identify with either of those labels, but whom understand themselves to be a part of the group described. Indigenous Lesbians, Bisexuals, Gay men, and Trans people (among others) who do not view themselves as either Queer or Two-Spirit are incidentally left out, or applied a label they do not apply to themselves.

Overall, this is an excellent work that provides the reader with a fantastic starting point to further formulate grounded normativity and a radical resurgence as applicable to their particular situations.

I listened to this on Hoopla--and it is narrated by the author. What better way to experience stories and songs written in a traditional native storytelling tradition than by listening to the author read them?

And these are fantastic. They are serious but funny--and some are very funny. The humor is dry and sarcastic and satirical. They are also painful, as her characters are living in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world not acknowledged or seen as such by most of the non-indigenous Canadians around them.

Everything in here is good. My favorites: Doing the Right Thing; Unsubstantiated Health Benefits; and Situational Update 7.

This book is often listed as poetry, but they felt like the "stories" in the title, because each tells a story (long or short, they are all contained). They aren't what I would consider songs (none are sung on the audio, for example), but they certainly sound like verse. The downside of listening is, of course, that I don't know how the native words, names, and many places are spelled; nor how the stories look on the page (verse?).

I found this while looking through Thunderbirdwomanreads' Instagram feed, trying to find a book for Native November that I had not already read that was also available on Hoopla.

A quick read that I found very captivating. I didn't always understand what was going on or who was speaking but it shall go into my beloved pile all the same.

I want to rip apart every chapter of this book so they stand alone and put them randomly in my house so I can stumble across them at different times of the day and re-read them all again. Or put them all in different orders. Or stack them together in various formations. Put one chapter in every bag or backpack that I have. I finished reading this book and then flipped back and re-read the stories and poems that I loved the first time. This book is good. Of course, you have to listen to it here as well. You don't even need to have the book to listen to the poetry and songs on that website so go do it!

Simpson's collection balances a delicate line between self-aware academic ideology and insightful prose. I would have killed for a more sustained piece, but she captures so much in this collection of multi-genre pieces.

Simpson uses fiction as a vehicle to tell the truth.

And when fiction feels true, or real, it makes it all that much better. Her short fiction has distinctive multiple voices but I can feel her author’s touch in all of them and she makes me think about how I could be a better author or writer.

Her work as a musician means that her poetry reads and sounds like music. What I adore about her poetry is that it is not forced, it does not feel abstract in any way, I understand almost all of her poems which is a rare thing. Sometimes, with other authors, I just have to accept that if I read a poetry collection, I’m reading it for the language but not so with Simpson’s work.

Her work is so grounded and unapologetic — it’s sentimental and sweet and her creativity feels sacred, like nothing can touch it. I love that when I read her works I feel like she’s there within the story itself. She’s not a puppeteer, steering the character’s from above, but she’s weaving the story like a tapestry and telling it as she weaves, so that I feel like her fiction is a living, breathing thing.

Simpson feels like someone who is so surrounded by fiction that it just pours out of her. I actually also really enjoyed how she wrote social media interactions in her short fiction. They feel actually authentic rather than manufactured and forced, as though writing on social media or using hashtags is somehow beneath all other authors. How many books have we all read that feature teenagers talking to each other via text using random acronyms and anagrams and bizarre vocab that we, as young people who regularly use social media, have never even seen before?

Although, I will be curious to see how this book ages. What will happen to Instagram in 10 years time? Although Simpson doesn’t reference it directly, it’s odd to think about the fact that technology will change so much in the next five years, let alone 10.

Her writing was so commanding but she felt so comfortable in her prowess. I loved this book.

Just so lovely and a deeply beautiful book. Simpson manages to create such rich worlds within such small spaces, and there's a flow to all of the work in this book that is soothing even as it interrogates trauma. The love is so present and real in it, and it's definitely a work I'm going to revisit multiple times.

So many things to think about, so much to absorb and so many quotes to share from this book.

“We need to be willing to take on white supremacy, gender violence, heteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness within our movement. We need to be willing to develop personal relationships with other communities of coresistors beyond white allies. We need to develop these as place-based constellations of theory and practice because when we put our energy into building constellations of coresistance within grounded normativity that refuse to center whiteness, our real white allies show up in solidarity anyway.”

Flash stories, songs, poems, and fragments. I can’t really describe this book properly except to say it was beautiful and resonated deeply with me. Truly a must for any Indigenous post-colonial person.

I tremendous collection of essays by young Indigenous thinkers. The strength of this collection is how it accounts for both the diversity of issues and experiences as well as the diversity in 'philosophical' orientations or approaches advocated. A great introduction to contemporary Canadian Indigenous thought.

Read.this.book.

Reviewed here.