A review by anishinaabekwereads
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

challenging emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley is everything I needed as a teen. It reflects mino bimaadiziwin, shows how Anishinaabeg continue to live as Anishinaabe, how I continue to try to live my life as Anishinaabekwe. It does not shy away from the difficult truths of contemporary Anishinaabe life. In fact, Boulley carefully tracks some of our biggest hurtles towards resurgence (read: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson). Yet this novel is good medicine in written form, a kind of healing that so many Indigenous youth need.

Daunis Fontaine isn’t much like me. I don’t play hockey. I didn’t grow up on the reservation. I didn’t grow up with regular access to elders who carried our knowledge. My interaction with Anishinaabemowin was mostly words and phrases. Yet in so many ways I felt reflected in this book. I saw my own insecurities about not being “Ojibwe” enough, saw my own anxieties that I wasn’t speaking enough, wasn’t doing things “right.” And that too is a lesson we see in this novel that I really could have used in my teenage years.

Listen, the hype about this novel is real. It’s funny and sincere and painful and gripping. It’s devastating and beautiful. The cousins, the friends, the aunties are going to be so recognizable to Indigenous readers. The meals, the surroundings made me just a little homesick. And though the ending nearly ripped me apart, I turned that last page and the tears pressing behind my eyes were of pride and contentment. Is it possible to feel like you know a fictional character so well that you’re proud of them? I don’t know, but I do know that Daunis represents so many kwezensag and kwewag and each of us is moving towards a future in which we continue to survive and thrive.

****I received an eARC from the publisher for early review.****
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