Beatrice Culleton Mosionier

I chose this book in order to gain a better understanding of indigenous history, in particular the treatment given indigenous children placed in foster care and the resulting ramifications of such treatment. To those ends, the book served me well. Through the story of two sisters taken from their families and placed in a variety of foster homes, I felt I better understood the social and personal issues they faced as children, then later as adults. The story itself was a little slow moving at times, but there was enough there to hold my attention and force me to ask hard questions of myself. All this came about a month before the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools in BC and Saskatchewan. Shocking though that was, I think this book and its portrayal of treatment given the main characters, helped to prepare me for the awful news.… (meer)

I downloaded this book on Hoopla simply because it was fiction read by Michaela Washburn. I really enjoyed her reading of [book:The Break|29220494].

It turns out that this book is from 1983, and is very well known in Canada--I am in the US and had never heard of it. Even though this book reads at a very YA level, the content is very much adult--and there is an edited YA version.

This novel follows two Metis sisters, April and Cheryl Raintree, from their early childhood with their parents, through being split up and put into different foster homes (good and bad, 1 Metis), family meetings with their parents, schools, and then their experiences as young adults. These different experiences--and their different ages, Cheryl being younger has fewer memories of their parents than April--lead them to very different attitudes. April can pass as white if she chooses, and is ashamed of her Metis heritage. Cheryl could never pass as white and embraces her Metis heritage and plans to be a social worker. Both attitudes fail them as adults; just as April struggles to appreciate her culture, Cheryl cannot accept the problems her people have.

Mosionier is herself Metis and grew up in foster care. I wonder if any of the foster families depicted represent ones she lived with? How is this book viewed in the Metis community today, almost 40 years after it was first written?

Lots of trigger warnings on this one (the unedited version).… (meer)