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Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'
The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage by Alix E. Harrow
3 reviews
wytnie's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Cursing, Body horror, Alcoholism, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, and Medical content
laurareads87's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
I have enjoyed several of Harrow's novels and experience her writing as beautiful, but I did not love this short story. It was, as her novels are, poetic, but issues with representation making me pretty uncomfortable have left me feeling like I cannot give a rating.
The story follows Oona, an Indigenous woman who, in exchange for support for her ill younger brother, assists a colonial cartographer in mapping territory. Harrow does interesting things in the story with magic - or is it magic? - as well as style - the form of the travel diary.
Footnote 7 gets at my discomfort; it reads, in part, "Recent scholarship suggests Amerinds used to speak thousands of separate languages and called themselves a thousand different names. Over the years the lines between us -- the things that made us Shawnee and Quapaw and Osage and Chickasaw -- have blurred." Protagonist Oona and her family are of an unnamed nation, and Oona as a result reads like a bit of an amalgam of stereotypes, some romanticized and others not so much. It feels like the colonial reduction of the diversity of Indigenous cultures into a generic image is reproduced in this story, and not in a subversive or self-aware way.
The story follows Oona, an Indigenous woman who, in exchange for support for her ill younger brother, assists a colonial cartographer in mapping territory. Harrow does interesting things in the story with magic - or is it magic? - as well as style - the form of the travel diary.
Footnote 7 gets at my discomfort; it reads, in part, "Recent scholarship suggests Amerinds used to speak thousands of separate languages and called themselves a thousand different names. Over the years the lines between us -- the things that made us Shawnee and Quapaw and Osage and Chickasaw -- have blurred." Protagonist Oona and her family are of an unnamed nation, and Oona as a result reads like a bit of an amalgam of stereotypes, some romanticized and others not so much. It feels like the colonial reduction of the diversity of Indigenous cultures into a generic image is reproduced in this story, and not in a subversive or self-aware way.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Racism, Child abuse, and Chronic illness
Moderate: Death and Child death
lancakes's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Minor: Alcoholism, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Medical content, Physical abuse, Racism, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Violence
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