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jenniechantal 's review for:
Lost Children Archive
by Valeria Luiselli
Despite Luiselli's excellent prose, and the incredible depth and humour she brought to the characterization of the two children when told from the voice of the mother, this book was a disappointment.
My issue, and it's a very big one, is with her consistent description of the Chiricahua
Apache as "lost", absent, vanished, existing only in the past.
"Because they were the last of something."
"...where...the last of the Apaches are buried."
"He's somehow trying to capture their past presence in the world, and making it audible, despite their current absence..."
This is a lie. They are, in no way, gone. They are very much alive, present and have their own voices. It's shocking to me, that someone who obviously did an incredible amount of research for this book never bothered to fact-check what accounts for a foundational part of this story. The irony of how she fully takes away the reality and voice of one group of marginalized people while trying so hard to capture the sounds, the voices, the presence of another marginalized group. The disservice she does to the Chiricahua by propagating the lie that they are, essentially "extinct" is sickening to me.
My issue, and it's a very big one, is with her consistent description of the Chiricahua
Apache as "lost", absent, vanished, existing only in the past.
"Because they were the last of something."
"...where...the last of the Apaches are buried."
"He's somehow trying to capture their past presence in the world, and making it audible, despite their current absence..."
This is a lie. They are, in no way, gone. They are very much alive, present and have their own voices. It's shocking to me, that someone who obviously did an incredible amount of research for this book never bothered to fact-check what accounts for a foundational part of this story. The irony of how she fully takes away the reality and voice of one group of marginalized people while trying so hard to capture the sounds, the voices, the presence of another marginalized group. The disservice she does to the Chiricahua by propagating the lie that they are, essentially "extinct" is sickening to me.