I had read a Katherena Vermette book before and was interested in her new one. This follows the Stanger family by using the voice of 3 generations of the women in the Stranger family. Their stories are heartbreaking and I felt that some of the character’s lives and descriptions were a bit too long. This book could have been 50 pages shorter. ( )

I quite enjoyed the first book in this series but found this one touch to get through. It is a different branch of the family and while the first book had a reason the family rallies together this one was just a very sad story of a woman who couldn't keep her children due to drug addiction. I was routing for each of the children but sadly there wasn't much hope. A very bleak picture of their lives just made it a difficult read. ( )

This book follows actions portrayed in Ms. Vermette's previous novel, The Break. It follows the story of The Strangers: Elsie, Phoenix, and Cedar-Sage and Elsie's mother, Margaret. It gives some back story...but not all. Notably missing are the circumstances of Phoenix's conception and why she is incarcerated. While it is a great story on its own, readers will, I think, appreciate it more (especially the very end) if they've read The Break. Or, even if they read The Break after reading The Strangers.

Once again, we have a story about a Metis family focusing on the women: Margaret, her daughter Elsie, and Elsie's daughters Phoenix and Cedar. It is a story of family support and estrangement...sometimes by choice, but mostly because of the way life marginalizes Indigenous peoples and then "saves" or punishes them through the child welfare and penal systems. It is a difficult book to read as the characters are beaten down over and over again, but there is some hope. It is a testament to the importance of family and culture. The writing is sharp, doesn't pull any punches, but also conveys compassion for the characters, even when they are behaving badly. ( )

The Strangers is a very interesting novel which took me on a learning journey about the Métis people of Canada.

Amongst other things, I learned that I should not have included The Strangers in my post announcing First Nations Reading Week, and I should not have described the Canadian author Katherena Vermette (b.1977) as a 'Red River Métis (Michif) Canadian First Nations author' ... because the Métis people are not among the First Nations of the North American continent.

The Métis refers to a group of Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States.

They have a shared history and culture and are of mixed Indigenous and European (primarily French) ancestry which became a distinct group through ethnogenesis by the mid-18th century, during the fur trade era.

In Canada, the Métis, with a population of 587,545 as of 2016, are one of three major groups of Indigenous peoples that were legally recognized in the Constitution Act of 1982, the other two groups being the First Nations and the Inuit. (Wikipedia, lightly edited to remove unnecessary links and footnotes, viewed 17/6/22)

Vermette, as she describes herself on her website, is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer from Treaty 1 territory, the heart of the Métis Nation.

(So I have some editing to do on that post, which I will attend to ASAP.)

According to Vermette's page at Wikipedia, she was born to a Métis father and a Mennonite mother, and she grew up in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, an area populated by about 25% First Nations and Métis people, and also an area which attracts negative outsider attention because of the reported crime rate. Her writing is motivated by activism, and by her experience with working with 'at risk' marginalised young people.

So, how does this impact on the story she tells in The Strangers?

The title, for a start, has multiple meanings. 'Stranger' is apparently a common name amongst Métis, making me speculate about how that came to be over time. Because the novel is about family members who are estranged from each other, from mainstream society and from the culture that could sustain them.

The novel begins with the first of four narrators, the teenage Phoenix, whose first person narrative from a youth detention centre is marked by so much foul language that I was curious enough to actually count the 130 instances of one particular word over 22 pages. What is interesting about this is that most of this narrative is internal. She rarely speaks, so this is not offensive language used to provoke others or to belong in a peer group. Her sister Cedar, brought up in foster homes since the death of their little sister Sparrow does not speak like this. Nor does anyone else in her family. It is the experience of youth detention that has caused this confronting language, which she has internalised. It has become her default, which will have social consequences. Some people will find it alienating and will make judgements about her because of it. And because it is internalised, it is a habit that will be hard to break if she wants to change it.

What does stand her in good stead is her habit of thinking, but not articulating her contempt for others who make contemptible assumptions about her. This first chapter is about the birth of her child, who is immediately adopted out. Later in the novel, when Phoenix meets the adoptive grandmother of this child, she is able to control what she says so that she doesn't inflame the woman's prejudice. The reader notes that this character's name is an allusion to the mythical Phoenix, and feels a flicker of hope...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/06/17/the-strangers-by-katherena-vermette/ ( )

A story full of sorrow and hope, this novel follows the path of 4 women from one Metis family and their inter-generational and connected struggle. A beautifully written book, that emphasized the importance of family over and over.

The writing will move you. ( )