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A review by avalinahsbooks
Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod
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