Book picks similar to
Field Notes for the Self by Randy Lundy


poetry
indigenous
indigenous-authors
canadian

I have to live


Aisha Sasha John - 2017
     Juiced on the ecstasy of self-belief: I have to live. A burgeoning erotics of psychic boldness: I have to live. In which sensitivity is recognized as wealth: I have to live. Trumpeting the forensic authority of the heart: I have to live. This is original ancient poetry. It fashions a universe from its mouth.

Lyrics and Poems 1997-2012


John K. Samson - 2012
    Samson captures the essential images of contemporary life. Whether on the streets of his beloved and bewildering hometown of Winnipeg, an outpost in Antarctica, or a room in an Edward Hopper painting, he finds whimsy and elegance in the everyday, beauty and sorrow in the overlooked.This collection gathers together Samson's writing, starting with his band The Weakerthans' 1997 debut album Fallow, through Left and Leaving, Reconstruction Site, and the award-winning Reunion Tour. It also features lyrics from Samson's newly released solo album, Provincial, and selected poems.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground


Alicia Elliott - 2019
    She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrifcation, writing and representation, and in the process makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long battle with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft Dinner to how systemic oppression is directly linked to health problems in Native communities.With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott provides a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future.

Chuvalo: A Fighter's Life: The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator


George Chuvalo - 2013
    After teaching himself the basics, he turned pro as an eighteen-year-old in 1956 and over the next twenty-three years fought some of the sport's greatest names: Joe Frazier, George Foreman and, most famously, Muhammad Ali (twice). Since retiring from the ring in 1979, Chuvalo has had to come to terms with a series of crushing body blows. His youngest son, a heroin addict, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Two other sons died from heroin overdoses. His first wife, overcome with grief, took her own life. Yet Chuvalo has stoically fought back. He formed his Fight Against Drugs foundation in 1996 and has spent the past seventeen years travelling across Canada and to parts of the United States, talking to tens of thousands of students and young adults about what happened to his family.An inspirational story of a Canadian icon, Chuvalo is both a top-flight boxing memoir and a poignant, hard-hitting story of coping with unimaginable loss.

Crown Noble


Bianca Phipps - 2020
    Phipps ruminates on the ways we are shaped as humans. Is it nature or nurture? Is it fate or a happen chance? What teaches us to love our generational inheritance, no matter how harmful? Phipps takes us to the most intimate parts of family matters in hopes of underantdatning conflict as a means of overcoming.

Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent


Liz Howard - 2015
        In Liz Howard’s wild, scintillating debut, the mechanisms we use to make sense of our worlds – even our direct intimate experiences of it – come under constant scrutiny and a pressure that feels like love. What Howard can accomplish with language strikes us as electric, a kind of alchemy of perception and catastrophe, fidelity and apocalypse. The waters of Northern Ontario shield country are the toxic origin and an image of potential. A subject, a woman, a consumer, a polluter; an erotic force, a confused brilliance, a very necessary form of urgency – all are loosely tethered together and made somehow to resonate with our own devotions and fears; made “to be small and dreaming parallel / to ceremony and decay.” Liz Howard is what contemporary poetry needs right now.

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume 1


Hope NicholsonRachel Qitsualik-Tinsley - 2015
    (Titan: An Alternate History, Delta, Hobson's Gate, Jewish Comix Anthology) and edited by Hope Nicholson (Brok Windsor, Lost Heroes, Nelvana of the Northern Lights), MOONSHOT brings together dozens of creators from across North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling.From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work in North America. The traditional stories presented in the book are with the permission from the elders in their respective communities, making this a truly genuine, never-before-seen publication. MOONSHOT is an incredible collection that is sure to amaze, intrigue and entertain!Here are some of the talented writers and artists who have contributed to MOONSHOT:Claude St-Aubin (R.E.B.E.L.S., Green Lantern, Captain Canuck), Jeffery Veregge (G.I. Joe, Judge Dredd), Stephen Gladue (MOONSHOT cover artist), Haiwei Hou (Two Brothers), Nicholas Burns (Arctic Comics, Curse of Chucky, Super Shamou), Jon Proudstar (Tribal Force), George Freeman (Captain Canuck, Aquaman, Batman), Elizabeth LaPensee (Survivance, The Nature of Snakes, Fala), Buffy Sainte-Marie (Fire & Fleet & Candlelight, Coincidence & Likely Stories), Richard Van Camp (Path of the Warrior, Kiss Me Deadly), David Robertson (The Evolution of Alice, Stone), David Cutler (The Northern Guard), Menton J. Matthews III (Monocyte, Memory Collectors, Three Feathers), Jay Odjick (Kagagi: The Raven), Ian Ross (Heart of a Distant Tribe, Bereav'd of Light, An Illustrated History of the Anishinabe), Lovern Kindzierski (X-Men, Wolverine, Incredible Hulk, Thor, Spiderman), Arigon Starr (Super Indian, Indigenous Narratives Collective), Michael Sheyahshe (Dark Owl, Native Americans in Comic Books), Fred Pashe (SpiritWolf) and more!

Moccasin Square Gardens: Short Stories


Richard Van Camp - 2019
    These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves (“The Camel Clutch”), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or “Sky People,” love, lust and prayers for peace.While this is Van Camp’s most hilarious short story collection, it’s also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity. The stories in Moccasin Square Gardens show that medicine power always comes with a price.To counteract this darkness, Van Camp weaves a funny and loving portrayal of the Tłı̨chǫ Dene and other communities of the North, drawing from oral history techniques to perfectly capture the character and texture of everyday small-town life. “Moccasin Square Gardens” is the nickname of a dance hall in the town of Fort Smith that serves as a meeting place for a small but diverse community. In the same way, the collection functions as a meeting place for an assortment of characters, from shamans and time-travelling goddess warriors to pop-culture-obsessed pencil pushers, to con artists, archivists and men who just need to grow up, all seeking some form of connection.

Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands/Rebelió


Martín Espada - 1990
    Poems in English and Spanish that discuss what it means to be Puerto Rican in the United States today.

Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems


Robert Bly - 2011
    In the title poem, Bly addresses the "donkey"—possibly poetry itself—that has carried him through a writing life of more than six decades.from "Talking into the Ear of a Donkey"      "What has happened to the spring,"      I cry, "and our legs that were so joyful      In the bobblings of April?" "Oh, never mind      About all that," the donkey      Says. "Just take hold of my mane, so you      Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears."

Moon of the Crusted Snow


Waubgeshig Rice - 2018
    Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.

Half-Breed


Maria Campbell - 1973
    At 15 she tried in vain to escape by marrying a white man, only to find herself trapped in the slums of Vancouver—addicted to drugs, tempted by suicide, close to death. But the inspiration of her Cree great-grandmother, Cheechum, gives her confidence in herself and in her people, confidence she needs to survive and to thrive.Half-Breed offers an unparalleled understanding of the Métis people and of the racism and hatred they face. Maria Campbell's story cannot be denied and it cannot be forgotten: it stands as a challenge to all Canadians who believe in human rights and human dignity.

People Change


Vivek Shraya - 2022
    We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions.In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who's made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna. What emerges is a meditation on change itself: why we fear it, why we're drawn to it, what motivates us to change, and what traps us in place.At a time when we're especially contemplating who we want to be, this slim and stylish handbook is an essential companion--a guide to celebrating our many selves and the inspiration to discover who we'll become next.

Five Little Indians


Michelle Good - 2020
    The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can’t stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew.With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.

Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers


Elissa Washuta - 2019
    Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket.Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.