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ellenjoannecampbell 's review for:
Permanent Astonishment: A Memoir
by Tomson Highway
Tomson Highway's "Kiss of the Fur Queen" has stayed with me decades after it was written, outlining the horrors of adolescence and early adulthood for Tomson and his younger brother René after they come to Winnipeg for their high school education as survivors of residential school abuse.
Permanent Astonishment strikes me as whitewashing of this earlier account, portraying a wondrous and wonderful childhood in residential school and during summers, working hard to help their parents with their fishing camps. The priests in the area are portrayed as kind and the parents and their family members are ardent Catholics.
Life can be both wonderful and horrible but this change in focus seems extreme at a time when the remains of indigenous children are being exhumed every week at residential schools across the country. Still, Highway writes well and he portrays a pre-technological era that will never return.
Permanent Astonishment strikes me as whitewashing of this earlier account, portraying a wondrous and wonderful childhood in residential school and during summers, working hard to help their parents with their fishing camps. The priests in the area are portrayed as kind and the parents and their family members are ardent Catholics.
Life can be both wonderful and horrible but this change in focus seems extreme at a time when the remains of indigenous children are being exhumed every week at residential schools across the country. Still, Highway writes well and he portrays a pre-technological era that will never return.