My Conversations with Canadians
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My Conversations with Canadians

by Lee Maracle
  • critically-acclaimed
  • diversity
  • feminism
  • from-british-columbia
  • indigenous
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn’t possibly answer at that moment. But she has been thinking about it ever since. As time has passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, prejudice and reconciliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she’s had as a First Nations leader, a woman, a mother, and grandmother over the course of her life. Lee Maracle’s My Conversations with Canadians presents a tour de force exploration into the writer’s own history and a reimagining of the future of our nation.

Contributors

Lee Maracle, author

North Vancouver–born Lee Maracle is the author of numerous critically acclaimed literary works, including Sundogs, Ravensong, Sojourner’s Truth and Other Stories, Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, Daughters Are Forever, Will’s Garden, Bent Box, Memory Serves, I Am Woman, and Talking to the Diaspora. She is the coeditor of a number of anthologies, including the award-winning My Home As I Remember. A member of the Sto: Loh nation, Maracle is a recipient of the Order of Canada, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, the JT Stewart Award, and the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for 2014. Maracle is currently an instructor in the Aboriginal Studies Program at the University of Toronto, where she teaches Oral Tradition. She is also the Traditional Teacher for First Nation’s House and an instructor with the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Maracle has served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington, and received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University in 2009.

Reviews

  • By inviting us into her home, Maracle reminds us that we inhabit someone else’s space. We come to see that maybe we are the problem and that reconciliation is not a solution — not without restitution. - Julie McGonega, The UC Observerl Link to review
  • A very timely work in the era of the botched Canada 150 celebrations and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women inquiry… a powerful and thought provoking read. Highly recommended. - Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun Link to review
  • Maracle sets the record straight on a few of our beloved myths, including Canada’s current narrative as a model multicultural society. - Kamal Al-Solaylee, Quill & Quire Link to review
  • “My Conversations With Canadians"[…] offer[s] strength and solidarity to Indigenous readers, and a generous guide to ally-ship for non-Indigenous readers. For the latter, these books will unsettle, but to engage in allyship is to commit to being unsettled – all the time. - Carleigh Baker, The Globe and Mail Link to review

Rights Holder

Rights Holder: Book*hug

email: hazel@bookthug.ca

website: www.bookthug.ca

rights available: World

Additional Information

age range: Adult

number of pages: 168

publication date: 10/01/2017

Original language of pub: English

Materials Available: finished book