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A review by kierscrivener
Islands of Decolonial Love by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
2.0
She tells an anecdote about canoeing and how an old man is telling a story in English that is only facts that if told in our language would be poetry. And I feel that way about this collection of short stories, that I have to keep reminding myself aren't just a group of vignettes about her life as though at times funny, compelling and emotional don't have the structure or the introspection of fiction.
I could see this being someone's style, as I heard similar complaints about fellow Canadian Vivek Shraya's memoir I'm Afraid of Men. Both have loosely connected stories of identity, queerness, family dynamics, and discrimination but though Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's are fiction and Shraya's nonfiction, Shraya manages to align them into a progression of experiences, narrative and introspection. I feel similarly about How To Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, a book with more similarities to Islands of Decolonial Islands, it is a 2020 collection of short stories about Lao refugees and immigrants in Canada. They are disconnected stories but come together in theme and progression, and the many aspects of the Asian Canadian experience.
I don't want to compare one book to another as each are crafted and created in their own way and by authors with different intentions and experiences, but as a reader and reviewer I want to explain my own biases and the context of what I thinking of when writing.
Thinking more on Decolonial Love, I realized the stem of my disconnection is the bird's eye view that Simpson employs. She feels detached from the reader and so does her stories, I am basing this only on my reading but it feels like auto-fiction as no preamble or protagonist name is ever given (correct me if I am wrong). Instead we jump into stories with limited knowledge of character or setting, I feel like if I wasn't local to where she was writing it would have been even harder to follow.
But also this could be the point, it is about islands of decolonial love, it isn't for a white reader like me, and islands indicates the separateness of stories. It is pushing back against conventional storytelling and writing for a white audience, instead writing of experiences and places the Native audience need not have explained.
Saying that, I still think she could have done a better job of inviting the reader into the story, there is a section on suicide and therapy that stuck out to be distinctively (I am a counsellor by trade), intergenerational trauma and mental health comes with centuries of mistreatment, genocide, colonization and abuse and institutions have often taken advantage of Indigenous people while proclaiming to help so the mistrust is more then reasonable. But the section is still more focused on the white savourism of the therapist then the emotions of the protagonist, this could have been done (imo) really well if we had of sat down with them and had the protagonist's thoughts and snark interspersed with the conversation rather then stray observations. But I have a love of awkward moments and their use in exploring characters and I am biased to seeing therapy represented.
I am biased toward my long winded lyrical writing with too much preamble, and I loaned the Accident of Being Lost to see if I have better luck with her later works. But for me this was a miss, I did find her occasionally funny, poignant or compelling and my heart shone to see Kitchener casually referenced in the second story but in the end I really couldn't connect - and that might have been the point.
"Therapy-lady liked to compare my life to refugees from war-torn countries who hid their kids in closets when airplanes flew over their houses. This was her limit of understanding on colonized intimacy. She wasn't completely wrong, and while she tried to convince me none of us had to hide our kids anymore, we both knew that wasn't exactly true. I knew what every ndn knows: that vulnerability, forgiveness and acceptance were privileges. She made the assumption of a white person: they were readily available to all like the fresh produce at the grocery store."
I could see this being someone's style, as I heard similar complaints about fellow Canadian Vivek Shraya's memoir I'm Afraid of Men. Both have loosely connected stories of identity, queerness, family dynamics, and discrimination but though Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's are fiction and Shraya's nonfiction, Shraya manages to align them into a progression of experiences, narrative and introspection. I feel similarly about How To Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, a book with more similarities to Islands of Decolonial Islands, it is a 2020 collection of short stories about Lao refugees and immigrants in Canada. They are disconnected stories but come together in theme and progression, and the many aspects of the Asian Canadian experience.
I don't want to compare one book to another as each are crafted and created in their own way and by authors with different intentions and experiences, but as a reader and reviewer I want to explain my own biases and the context of what I thinking of when writing.
Thinking more on Decolonial Love, I realized the stem of my disconnection is the bird's eye view that Simpson employs. She feels detached from the reader and so does her stories, I am basing this only on my reading but it feels like auto-fiction as no preamble or protagonist name is ever given (correct me if I am wrong). Instead we jump into stories with limited knowledge of character or setting, I feel like if I wasn't local to where she was writing it would have been even harder to follow.
But also this could be the point, it is about islands of decolonial love, it isn't for a white reader like me, and islands indicates the separateness of stories. It is pushing back against conventional storytelling and writing for a white audience, instead writing of experiences and places the Native audience need not have explained.
Saying that, I still think she could have done a better job of inviting the reader into the story, there is a section on suicide and therapy that stuck out to be distinctively (I am a counsellor by trade), intergenerational trauma and mental health comes with centuries of mistreatment, genocide, colonization and abuse and institutions have often taken advantage of Indigenous people while proclaiming to help so the mistrust is more then reasonable. But the section is still more focused on the white savourism of the therapist then the emotions of the protagonist, this could have been done (imo) really well if we had of sat down with them and had the protagonist's thoughts and snark interspersed with the conversation rather then stray observations. But I have a love of awkward moments and their use in exploring characters and I am biased to seeing therapy represented.
I am biased toward my long winded lyrical writing with too much preamble, and I loaned the Accident of Being Lost to see if I have better luck with her later works. But for me this was a miss, I did find her occasionally funny, poignant or compelling and my heart shone to see Kitchener casually referenced in the second story but in the end I really couldn't connect - and that might have been the point.
"Therapy-lady liked to compare my life to refugees from war-torn countries who hid their kids in closets when airplanes flew over their houses. This was her limit of understanding on colonized intimacy. She wasn't completely wrong, and while she tried to convince me none of us had to hide our kids anymore, we both knew that wasn't exactly true. I knew what every ndn knows: that vulnerability, forgiveness and acceptance were privileges. She made the assumption of a white person: they were readily available to all like the fresh produce at the grocery store."