Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco

6 reviews

franz_comme_kafka's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25


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jhbandcats's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

Joe Sacco is a treasure. He documents what he sees in precise line drawings, illustrating his books in depth and detail that add to the words that his people say. 

In this book, he shows the collective trauma visited upon the Dene, an indigenous people who primarily live in Canada’s Northwest Territories. His interviews with natives across Dene land, from the old to the young, show the problems they as a group face, and the ways the communities are struggling to resolve them. 

The section on the residential schools, where children were removed from their families and forced to adopt the white people’s culture, was the most disturbing. In addition to being kidnapped and held prisoner for 8-10 years by the government, the children were physically punished and frequently sexually abused. 

By the time they returned home, they were so emotionally damaged that they could no longer communicate with their parents and grandparents. They relied on alcohol and drugs to mute their pain, and they passed their misery onto their own families. It is beyond tragic. 

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ellaschalski's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5


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bookbuzzard's review

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Though I'm not as familiar with the subject matter as I'd like, I think this book does a really great job showing us a variety of perspectives from the Dene people and telling us their stories. 
This book, like Sacco's other books, is very narration heavy, with lots of small print in small boxes that can often be hard to read and absorb, I often find myself reading one page over and over. However, overall, I am glad to have read it. 

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annabunce's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Excellent read - a holistic look at Dene and their relationship to resource extraction, the impacts of colonization and residential schools, and the complexity of community politics. Would highly recommend to anyone although I do have some questions about whether any of the funds from this book were directed back to community and noticed a couple errors that made me wonder about the editing process (ex writing Inuits instead of Inuit)

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usedtotheweather's review

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5.0


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