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A review by liralen
A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby
4.0
I had never experienced romantic feelings or sexual desire for a man. At best, I felt sexually indifferent toward men, and, at worst, sickened by the idea of sex with them. The possibility of finding a female partner and experiencing happiness in a lesbian relationship was not something I even imagined at the time. In Thunder Bay in the late 1970s, there was no visible lesbian or gay community. I believed my crushes and attractions for women were my own unique, strange burden to bear. I had learned to suppress those feelings long ago. (120)
Different images come to my mind when I remember my experience of coming out. Some days I felt like I was unzipping a layer of unwanted skin, and shedding it from my body like a snake, so I could move freely for the first time. Other days I felt as if I was coming out of a dark prison cell into sunlight. And then there were days I saw myself as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that, until then, had been forced into the wrong spaces, even into the wrong puzzle. But at last I had found the right puzzle, and I fit very well. (142)
It took me a while to get into this, because the telling is a little dry—one event after another, not a lot by way of full scenes or detailed descriptions.
But.
The farther I read, the more sense it made. There is so much here. She's lived more life than many, and there's a lot of hard material in here. To tell it all in full would take hundreds more pages. This isn't a memoir that builds those individual pictures, but what it does do is tell one hell of a story of a woman who fought and fought to build herself a life that was right for herself and to help others. Again: there is so much in here, good and bad. Being First Nations and growing up with a grandmother and seeing violence and alcoholism in the community. Being married off young. Abuse. Children and hard births (think spending hours on a sled to get to hospital) and loss. More abuse. More loss. Alcoholism and poverty and friendship and fostering and getting back on her feet. Coming out in a community that did not understand lesbianism. Violence. Vision loss. Finding ways to put those puzzle pieces together.
As a book, it's not amazing, but as a story, it's worth a read. It's a lot, but an important lot.
Different images come to my mind when I remember my experience of coming out. Some days I felt like I was unzipping a layer of unwanted skin, and shedding it from my body like a snake, so I could move freely for the first time. Other days I felt as if I was coming out of a dark prison cell into sunlight. And then there were days I saw myself as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that, until then, had been forced into the wrong spaces, even into the wrong puzzle. But at last I had found the right puzzle, and I fit very well. (142)
It took me a while to get into this, because the telling is a little dry—one event after another, not a lot by way of full scenes or detailed descriptions.
But.
The farther I read, the more sense it made. There is so much here. She's lived more life than many, and there's a lot of hard material in here. To tell it all in full would take hundreds more pages. This isn't a memoir that builds those individual pictures, but what it does do is tell one hell of a story of a woman who fought and fought to build herself a life that was right for herself and to help others. Again: there is so much in here, good and bad. Being First Nations and growing up with a grandmother and seeing violence and alcoholism in the community. Being married off young. Abuse. Children and hard births (think spending hours on a sled to get to hospital) and loss. More abuse. More loss. Alcoholism and poverty and friendship and fostering and getting back on her feet. Coming out in a community that did not understand lesbianism. Violence. Vision loss. Finding ways to put those puzzle pieces together.
As a book, it's not amazing, but as a story, it's worth a read. It's a lot, but an important lot.