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A review by weaselweader
Kiss of the Fur Queen: Penguin Modern Classics Edition by Tomson Highway
2.0
“Visit by visit, word, by word, these sons were splitting from their subarctic roots, their Cree beginnings.”
Residential schools; hijacked children separated forcibly from their villages, siblings and parents; forced baptisms; violent discipline and brutal beatings, even unto death; inadequate nutrition and medical care; sexual abuse; and religious and cultural terrorism! Check! From their first implementation in Canada to their final demise in the late stages of the 20th century, the reality that religious-based aboriginal residential schools, most notably the Roman Catholic versions, were guilty of de facto cultural genocide has been admitted by the Canadian government. This crime against humanity has been acknowledged as demanding reparation and compensation for the victims. It’s the heady stuff of current headlines across North America and there’s plenty of meat for both novels and non-fiction journalistic exposés and histories.
Two thumbs up for KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN’s novel approach of making only passing reference to the trials and tribulations that two Cree brothers clearly suffered during their actual time in a residential school in northern Manitoba. The interesting focus of the novel is on the mental anguish that both boys suffered, their falling into alcoholism and even gay prostitution, during their attempted assimilation into a modern white man’s world in Winnipeg and beyond as a result of the destruction of their minds’ links to their cultural and linguistic Cree background. Except here’s the thing! KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN fell in love with its own literary pretentiousness and went WAY over the top with its disjointed conversations and disrupted timelines, day dreams, night dreams, and even tortured flights of fantasy that included conversations with Weesageechak, the wily, shape-shifting, aboriginal Trickster.
I wanted KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN to work. I really did. But despite moments of acknowledged, breathtaking brilliance, the novel as a whole just didn’t win me over. Your reaction may be different, of course, and, by all means, current circumstances in Canada might demand that you give it a shot but, for me, I’m setting it aside and looking elsewhere on my aboriginal reading list.
Paul Weiss
Residential schools; hijacked children separated forcibly from their villages, siblings and parents; forced baptisms; violent discipline and brutal beatings, even unto death; inadequate nutrition and medical care; sexual abuse; and religious and cultural terrorism! Check! From their first implementation in Canada to their final demise in the late stages of the 20th century, the reality that religious-based aboriginal residential schools, most notably the Roman Catholic versions, were guilty of de facto cultural genocide has been admitted by the Canadian government. This crime against humanity has been acknowledged as demanding reparation and compensation for the victims. It’s the heady stuff of current headlines across North America and there’s plenty of meat for both novels and non-fiction journalistic exposés and histories.
Two thumbs up for KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN’s novel approach of making only passing reference to the trials and tribulations that two Cree brothers clearly suffered during their actual time in a residential school in northern Manitoba. The interesting focus of the novel is on the mental anguish that both boys suffered, their falling into alcoholism and even gay prostitution, during their attempted assimilation into a modern white man’s world in Winnipeg and beyond as a result of the destruction of their minds’ links to their cultural and linguistic Cree background. Except here’s the thing! KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN fell in love with its own literary pretentiousness and went WAY over the top with its disjointed conversations and disrupted timelines, day dreams, night dreams, and even tortured flights of fantasy that included conversations with Weesageechak, the wily, shape-shifting, aboriginal Trickster.
I wanted KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN to work. I really did. But despite moments of acknowledged, breathtaking brilliance, the novel as a whole just didn’t win me over. Your reaction may be different, of course, and, by all means, current circumstances in Canada might demand that you give it a shot but, for me, I’m setting it aside and looking elsewhere on my aboriginal reading list.
Paul Weiss