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alisonj's review against another edition
4.0
I find it hard to rate memoirs. If I don’t fully connect with the narrative, but I do feel like it’s a life story worth telling/reading, how many stars do I give? I feel like I'm critiquing a person's life. In this case, I didn’t love the execution of the book, but there’s a lot of important stuff here, largely around the intergenerational trauma stemming from colonialism and residential schools, plus the author’s coming to terms with being a gay man in the 1970s and 1980s in the wake of sexual abuse by his brother-in-law and having becoming a born-again Christian. (Side note: points deducted for repeated use of the phrase “lovemaking session.”) A story well worth telling, with some editorial choices that didn't work for me.
3.5*
3.5*
penny_literaryhoarders's review against another edition
I'm not rating this since I skimmed through it. It just wasn't speaking to me at the moment, I'm not sure it's one I'll return to, so I'm just going to pack it in.
rebeccahussey's review against another edition
Mamaskatch is a memoir about Darrel McLeod’s boyhood and young adulthood in Alberta, Canada. He is a member of the Cree tribe and feels a strong sense of connection to his culture and family. But his childhood is a difficult one, as he loses his father at a young age and his mother struggles with poverty and alcoholism. His siblings are in and out of foster care, and he often finds himself responsible for them even though he is still a child himself. He suffers sexual abuse at the hands of his brother-in-law. We learn about mistreatment his mother and aunts experienced from members of the Catholic church. It’s a difficult story, but McLeod tells it movingly and beautifully. It’s a dark book, but a hopeful one too, as McLeod finds ways of understanding and coming to terms with his complicated life.
https://bookriot.com/2019/06/01/june-indie-press-releases/
https://bookriot.com/2019/06/01/june-indie-press-releases/
avalinahsbooks's review against another edition
3.0
Mamaskatch concentrates on the hard youth of a queer Native American boy and his struggles to get out of his situation, but also maintain ties to a family that was entirely dysfunctional due to generations upon generations of cultural erasure by the white man. It was easily readable and had quite a light tone, considering how tough some of the contents were (rape, violence, homelessness, death.)
Mamaskatch doesn't just concentrate on the life experience of the author – it talks a lot about the experiences of his mother and her sisters, cousins – it especially broke my soul to read about the concentration-camp-like convent style schools where these terrible, cruel nuns inflicted impossible damage upon the little Native American girls. I wept when I read about them not being able to have meals or have to walk barefoot on the cold floor over just speaking a word in their language. To be forbidden to use your own language, especially as a child, is one of the cruelest ways to erase a culture. Perhaps I reacted so strongly because my own people had once been abused in a similar manner – I have actually posted about this before, about the book smugglers – because that was the only way to keep our written word, as it was forbidden by the Russian empire to print anything in the Lithuanian language and alphabet.
I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook through Edelweiss in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.
Triggers:I might be missing some, but there is rape (lots and lots, and not just women), there is death, suicide, there is drug abuse and alcoholism, poverty of course, homelessness, all kinds of abuse by teachers and church people, domestic violence and just plain old violence, a sad story of changing your sex, coming out as gay in a very conservative society (there's even an exorcism for.. being gay. Yes.) Children die, teens die. I don't know where to start and where to finish. I may have missed a lot, but you get the picture.
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Mamaskatch doesn't just concentrate on the life experience of the author – it talks a lot about the experiences of his mother and her sisters, cousins – it especially broke my soul to read about the concentration-camp-like convent style schools where these terrible, cruel nuns inflicted impossible damage upon the little Native American girls. I wept when I read about them not being able to have meals or have to walk barefoot on the cold floor over just speaking a word in their language. To be forbidden to use your own language, especially as a child, is one of the cruelest ways to erase a culture. Perhaps I reacted so strongly because my own people had once been abused in a similar manner – I have actually posted about this before, about the book smugglers – because that was the only way to keep our written word, as it was forbidden by the Russian empire to print anything in the Lithuanian language and alphabet.
I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook through Edelweiss in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.
Triggers:
Book Blog | Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter
readrunsea's review against another edition
4.0
I received an ARC from Milkweed Editions in exchange for an honest review; opinions are my own.
CW for sexual, emotional, physical abuse, suicide, alcoholism.
This book is truly a life story; narrated in first person by the author, the story is told from his perspective, but includes so many other characters who are deeply rendered with care and empathy. The other principle characters are McLeod’s mother, Bertha, and some of his siblings, including his sister Debbie and sibling Greggie (who was AMAB and later came out as a trans woman, changing her name to Trina).
The book starts out with an account of Bertha’s time in, and dramatic escape from, a Canadian residential school along with her sisters and cousins. This is an important setup, as it immediately establishes the theme of the ingrained, pervasive, and evil legacy and trauma of colonialism and white supremacy inflicted on Indigenous people of North America. McLeod writes about Catholicism throughout, first finding meaning in it, then rejecting it as white brainwashing, erasing Indigenous cultures through fearmongering, forced loss of language, racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. This itself is very powerful, but it’s far from the only pillar of this story.
As he grows from a curious, loyal, and happy child in rural Alberta hearing stories from his grandfather and loving the outdoors, McLeod’s life blooms and withers in turns. As Bertha sinks deeper into alcoholism and McLeod, as well as many of his siblings and family members, endure sexual, emotional, and violent abuse, the family fractures in a lot of ways. McLeod drifts in and out of close contact with different characters, and meanwhile explores/struggles with his own sexuality and the gender transition of both his sibling and his cousin. He writes poignantly about how whiteness and Catholicism specifically drastically (negatively) changed how gender nonconforming, trans, and sexually fluid people are viewed and treated in Indigenous communities, even within the span of a single generation.
So much happens in this story, so I highly recommend reading it for that reason alone- for a story of life’s complexity and messiness and broad mosaic of realities. There were times I felt lost on time, which was a bit confusing, but overall I found it very compelling and well written. My favorite part was how symbolic and pervasive different birds were in the text, but that’s just one thing of many. I definitely recommend this book; it’s a great Pride month read (even though pride is every month).
CW for sexual, emotional, physical abuse, suicide, alcoholism.
This book is truly a life story; narrated in first person by the author, the story is told from his perspective, but includes so many other characters who are deeply rendered with care and empathy. The other principle characters are McLeod’s mother, Bertha, and some of his siblings, including his sister Debbie and sibling Greggie (who was AMAB and later came out as a trans woman, changing her name to Trina).
The book starts out with an account of Bertha’s time in, and dramatic escape from, a Canadian residential school along with her sisters and cousins. This is an important setup, as it immediately establishes the theme of the ingrained, pervasive, and evil legacy and trauma of colonialism and white supremacy inflicted on Indigenous people of North America. McLeod writes about Catholicism throughout, first finding meaning in it, then rejecting it as white brainwashing, erasing Indigenous cultures through fearmongering, forced loss of language, racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. This itself is very powerful, but it’s far from the only pillar of this story.
As he grows from a curious, loyal, and happy child in rural Alberta hearing stories from his grandfather and loving the outdoors, McLeod’s life blooms and withers in turns. As Bertha sinks deeper into alcoholism and McLeod, as well as many of his siblings and family members, endure sexual, emotional, and violent abuse, the family fractures in a lot of ways. McLeod drifts in and out of close contact with different characters, and meanwhile explores/struggles with his own sexuality and the gender transition of both his sibling and his cousin. He writes poignantly about how whiteness and Catholicism specifically drastically (negatively) changed how gender nonconforming, trans, and sexually fluid people are viewed and treated in Indigenous communities, even within the span of a single generation.
So much happens in this story, so I highly recommend reading it for that reason alone- for a story of life’s complexity and messiness and broad mosaic of realities. There were times I felt lost on time, which was a bit confusing, but overall I found it very compelling and well written. My favorite part was how symbolic and pervasive different birds were in the text, but that’s just one thing of many. I definitely recommend this book; it’s a great Pride month read (even though pride is every month).
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