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A review by readingwithcoffee
Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Audio: Emily Nixon made the right choice to wear her heart on her sleeve while narrating the book, she did much to help humanize and eulogize the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in This area of Canadá and beyond. She really brought them their families and friends and the author herself to life.
Misc: I hate this being tagged as true crime because I genuinely think true crime is commodified and dehumanizing violent crimes especially violence against women into entertainment that often isn’t concerned w the fact but reviling in suffering and violence. Such as accounts like Stephanie Soo that pretend they weren’t lying about Amber heard now when they were using that woman’s public harassment for even anonymously discussing her abuse for monetized content for ages. Those people make me lucky that even if I am terrified of empty lots and just slightly shadowed by plants areas even in populated areas after the murder of my cousins neighbor who drove me to university while I studied in Mexico every day, murdered in his own neighborhood bc he checked out an abandoned lot near the Oxxo, at least being a Mexican man his unsolved murder is to uninteresting for anglophones to notice to butcher and desecrate like they do murdered women pretending preaching stranger danger or sensationalizing white women’s paranoia does anything to help women. When they’re again the first to spread myths about mutual abuse. This book doesn’t deserve to be in the same category as that drivel.
Book itself: the forward being by the first victim discussed Ramona’s cousin Mary Teegee is very good to start the book with a living First Nations woman talking about her very real reality of being in danger simply because of racist misogyny and her experience having lost a young relative to that violence. It serves adeptly as memorial and message to action and information and informed the reader of how directly the white Canadian reporter has worked with the families from their own mouths (as well as bookending the book w memorials of Ramona by different relatives). It’s a very good ethos and so this decision.
McDiarmid herself does well to humanize and tell the lives and ends as we know of it every victim and much of their surviving families as well. She deftly debunks myths based in racist misogyny that all these women and girls lived dangerous lives that were the “real” factors as opposed to lethal racism while then navigating back to discuss indigenous girls and women who were hitchhikers, sex workers, drug addicts and so on all without shaming them. She also is well informed and knows how to transition to discuss the ongoing pain of the original residential schools to the modern residential schools (Canadian and frankly American foster system) and how it harms and endangered indigenous people especially girls from being unable/unwilling to help girls in actually dangerous homes (literally putting on teen girl in a motel by herself or putting multiple in multiple abusive foster homes) to taking them from their indigenous communities …because a house didn’t have enough windows (which is a good example of the eugenics involved in saying poor people shouldn’t have children).
It was hard at the parts where she interviews Canadian police, the RCMP, where they argued for more funding and just deny racism exists in the force and blame everyone but themselves and waver between calling indigenous people liars to frankly stupid because First Nations are Just “wrong” about reality apparently. But it’s to ge that pov in book that explicitly discusses for the RCMP were explicitly formed to “settle the west” their literal creation is genocidal in nature that no wonder they are uncaring about contemporary genocide. Much like American cops they also intimidate victim families and clearly lie about barely teenage indigenous girls drowning while drunk based on racist stereotypes decades to two families in a row to try to mess with an overdue inquiry about their gross negligence.
I think the book is very educational about rural areas of Canada and even small cities I think be hard for people from more populated areas to understand. Also very deftly discusses much of 20th century anti-indigenous violence and I think is soooo important people realize the world they believe has always exist is very newly formed and a better world with land back and an end to genocide is possible.
Also I just felt this book was well written to discuss the murders of white Canadian girls and women to show the contrast in response that leads to people feeling safe in killing indigenous girls and women and the racism in the country at large that is killing these girls while being aware those specific white girls and women are still people who died horrifically and maliciously.
Deeply compelling and compassionate writing that i recommend.
Misc: I hate this being tagged as true crime because I genuinely think true crime is commodified and dehumanizing violent crimes especially violence against women into entertainment that often isn’t concerned w the fact but reviling in suffering and violence. Such as accounts like Stephanie Soo that pretend they weren’t lying about Amber heard now when they were using that woman’s public harassment for even anonymously discussing her abuse for monetized content for ages. Those people make me lucky that even if I am terrified of empty lots and just slightly shadowed by plants areas even in populated areas after the murder of my cousins neighbor who drove me to university while I studied in Mexico every day, murdered in his own neighborhood bc he checked out an abandoned lot near the Oxxo, at least being a Mexican man his unsolved murder is to uninteresting for anglophones to notice to butcher and desecrate like they do murdered women pretending preaching stranger danger or sensationalizing white women’s paranoia does anything to help women. When they’re again the first to spread myths about mutual abuse. This book doesn’t deserve to be in the same category as that drivel.
Book itself: the forward being by the first victim discussed Ramona’s cousin Mary Teegee is very good to start the book with a living First Nations woman talking about her very real reality of being in danger simply because of racist misogyny and her experience having lost a young relative to that violence. It serves adeptly as memorial and message to action and information and informed the reader of how directly the white Canadian reporter has worked with the families from their own mouths (as well as bookending the book w memorials of Ramona by different relatives). It’s a very good ethos and so this decision.
McDiarmid herself does well to humanize and tell the lives and ends as we know of it every victim and much of their surviving families as well. She deftly debunks myths based in racist misogyny that all these women and girls lived dangerous lives that were the “real” factors as opposed to lethal racism while then navigating back to discuss indigenous girls and women who were hitchhikers, sex workers, drug addicts and so on all without shaming them. She also is well informed and knows how to transition to discuss the ongoing pain of the original residential schools to the modern residential schools (Canadian and frankly American foster system) and how it harms and endangered indigenous people especially girls from being unable/unwilling to help girls in actually dangerous homes (literally putting on teen girl in a motel by herself or putting multiple in multiple abusive foster homes) to taking them from their indigenous communities …because a house didn’t have enough windows (which is a good example of the eugenics involved in saying poor people shouldn’t have children).
It was hard at the parts where she interviews Canadian police, the RCMP, where they argued for more funding and just deny racism exists in the force and blame everyone but themselves and waver between calling indigenous people liars to frankly stupid because First Nations are Just “wrong” about reality apparently. But it’s to ge that pov in book that explicitly discusses for the RCMP were explicitly formed to “settle the west” their literal creation is genocidal in nature that no wonder they are uncaring about contemporary genocide. Much like American cops they also intimidate victim families and clearly lie about barely teenage indigenous girls drowning while drunk based on racist stereotypes decades to two families in a row to try to mess with an overdue inquiry about their gross negligence.
I think the book is very educational about rural areas of Canada and even small cities I think be hard for people from more populated areas to understand. Also very deftly discusses much of 20th century anti-indigenous violence and I think is soooo important people realize the world they believe has always exist is very newly formed and a better world with land back and an end to genocide is possible.
Also I just felt this book was well written to discuss the murders of white Canadian girls and women to show the contrast in response that leads to people feeling safe in killing indigenous girls and women and the racism in the country at large that is killing these girls while being aware those specific white girls and women are still people who died horrifically and maliciously.
Deeply compelling and compassionate writing that i recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Genocide, Hate crime, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Murder, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism