This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories | 
pickAn excellent read: a mix of short stories and poetry, interweaving deep love, acidic humor, and vigourous critique from an Indigenous feminist perspective. The multiplicity of styles, voices, and issues—class and race, monologue texts, connection and right to land—is really rich. My only regret here is that the author read it: I think someone with a more dramatic voice would have been more engaging.
#Booked2022 #CanadianProvince
She is proudly attachment-parenting a chick.
The chick follows her around as she puts all the girls‘ hair into tidy buns. The other moms love the chick because it is so cute.Cheep. Cheep. Cheep. I feel bad for this chick. It‘s in an impossible situation. Imprinted to a crazy person of the wrong species. Alone in the world. At the mercy of these nutbars. Stolen from its natural habitat. Destined to serve humans. Colonized. Dispossessed. Oblivious.
#Bookspin
1. What is the What
2. City of Saints
3. Walking the Bowl
4. Seeing Ghosts
5. Spectacle
6. New Jim Crow
7. The Tears of a Man Flow Inward
8. Wayward Lives
9. A Long Way Gone
10. Disruption
11. When the Sahara was Green
12. Hope and other Dangerous Pursuits
13. Follow Those Zebras
14. The Boy
15. How Beautiful We Were
16. 100 Days
17. You are your best thing
18. Moonless Starless Sky
19. American Spy
20. Storied city
I always feel like a cheap trashy Indian when I‘m on the West Coast with all those goddam trees, mountains, oceans, and salmon, and all those goddam White people tripping over themselves to stop pipelines. What the fuck?
The neighbourhood we‘re going into has perennials instead of grass, they get organic vegetables delivered. They‘re also trying to make our neighbourhood into an Ontario heritage designation. That mostly means you can‘t do anything that makes your house looks like it isn‘t from the 1800s, or rent floors to the lower class… Their only job is to file the flyer on the fridge, it‘s a perfect get out of jail free card: Help the Indians in their plight.
I loved “Island of Decolonial Love” and 20 minutes in I am loving this one as well.
pickIncredibly powerful. Still unpacking and sitting with a lot of what I read in here.
This is happening tonight, although the catered food that was to follow has been cancelled on account of covid-19. (My opera and theatre events next week have been cancelled.) I am going to make the most of this outing, giving elbow bumps instead of hugs to all my friends. 😉
pickDeep & Conceptual. This is a short book, but each page is rich and worth lingering. Simpson writes in 1st person of a variety of characters, personifying a myriad of social topics of decolonization here from the internet to politics to guns and more as she sways the reader back and forth from prose to poem. Angry and loving and funny and stark. #Booked2019 #indigenousauthor @Cinfhen @BarbaraTheBibliophage @4thhouseontheleft
I needed a flavourful breakfast to compensate for last night's boring soup. The apples are smeared with this spicy cheese thing, the sausages are good and juicy, and the blackberry/blueberry/cherry combo is ace. Unfortunately, the grapes weren't good anymore. #audiocooking
I've got the full Canada Reads longlist on hold so I'll be ready no matter which books make it to the debate.
pickAn incredible collection of stories and songs/poems by this Nishnaabeg writer. Wonderfully diverse in content as well as format, with numerous SF stories. Beautiful writing, and beautiful narration in the audiobook by the author with her quietly powerful voice, just a little deadpan sarcastic in the perfect way to match the humour in many of the pieces. That said I feel like I missed some things from doing the audio, because you can't linger!
This book is so beautiful.
#NativeReads #IndigenousBooks
pickThis book of poems (described as songs) and stories is one I encountered at the @houseofanansi booth at AWP. It followed me home.
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Simpson navigates modernity as an "NDN" in spaces and rituals that have to be constructed just to connect to the past. Relationships become symbols of past and future.
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I followed a few rabbit holes of the music connected to her work, and recent Canadian events that were mentioned, but I was ignorant of.
Now I am sitting in my car trying to slow-drink kombucha even though I want to fast-drink kombucha because I'm nervous about the parking garage incident. I'm addicted to this shit like I'm a god-damn Amish-bearded soy-jerky-eating hipster. I was going to add the word 'white' in that last sentence but that would make it redundant.
(Internet photo)
They want a beach. We want rice beds. You can't have both. They want to win. We NEED to win. They'll still be white people if they don't have the kind of beach they want. Our kids won't be Mississauga if they can't ever do a single Mississauga thing.
(Internet photo)
How to Steal a Canoe: another great song that's included in this book and also available through YouTube. #Indigenous storytelling https://youtu.be/dp5oGZ1r60g
A music recording — f(l)ight — is a companion piece to Simpson's book, so I looked up some of the songs online. Road Salt is a gorgeous, haunting fable about a deer watched over by a crow. https://youtu.be/BTPIyT1L_pY
It was the precise moment I fell in love with you. It matters and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's not the kind of love that changes anything, except of course that it is love and so it changes everything, but just slightly and never forever.
This tiny moment: it was Binaakwe Giizis.* The light was rich and gold. The leaves had turned and, like you, they were ready to let go.
*October
"He was waiting for me in the parking lot when I parked my firefly of a rental car in between the Dodge Rams and the F150s with pink-like-only-white-men-are truck nuts hanging from their trailer hitches."
(Internet photo. I thought of you, @rabbitprincess )
I have to fake that I have a good body image around the kids because that's what good parents do. Love the body you are in. All bodies are beautiful. I don't have any imperfections, just a storied tapestry I call my beautiful body. That's not really how I feel. I hate my body like everyone else. Mostly I hate my upper arms because they are old fat grandma arms. I apologize to all the grandmas out there reading this.
I'm just going to add both of these to my #wishlist
I was working at beefing up our Aboriginal Authors display yesterday and found these gems in my search. They both sound amazing and I want them so bad guys!!! And those covers?!? In love ❤️
My talented pal Leanne Betasamosake Simpson reading at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival #Nativebooks #queerbooks
pickI'm biased because this author is a dear friend but it's an absolutely gorgeous read. Poetry, prose, sardonic wit and deep truths about being Native in Canada. It look me a long time to read it because I kept re-reading it. I adored this one! #Nativebooks #queerbooks
Reading in bed. This glorious book by my talented friend is such a pleasure to read! #queerbooks #Nativebooks ❤️📚
Last night I went to see my dear friend Leanne Betasamosake Simpson launching her new book "The Accident of Being Lost" in conjunction with her sister's album launch. ??❤️ #NativeBooks #queerbooks
