Warren Cariou

This was a mixed bag for me. The author recounts his childhood in a small town in Northern Saskatchewan.I loved the descriptions of the area, the landscape and the history. The book is the story of Cariou's life, his childhood and his attempt to answer the question - where do I come from?

Cariou explores the racial divides in Meadow Lake( only from his perspective), dips into his family tree and introduces us to his parents and siblings. My problem with the book is that his childhood was not that interesting, his sibling are barely described, and there just wasn't much meat in his story. Cariou spends a great deal of time describing adventures in nature, fishing, hunting, digging up artifacts, etc, but then he skims over school, friends, etc. I got a good sense of his Father but not his mother, some loving glimpses at his grandparents (who seemed quite intriguing) but his sister and brother were mere sketches. The author is approx. my age, but at first I felt like the book was set in the early 30's, not the 70's! Later mentions of TV shows and popular songs were jarring.

The author learns some secrets that have been buried in the family closet, but they are not that surprising. I guess they were life-changing for him, but I didn't really feel his conflict. He also spends time on an old school mate who became infamous, but since that was not his story it felt like he was attaching himself to a scandal and internalizing it merely because they went to the same school. It felt apart from the rest of the book and took up too much space, especially since any insights Cariou offered were mere speculation.

To me, the story of the settlers in the area would have been fascinating, but Cariou's life was just not that interesting.....
… (altro)

More like 3.5? It's a decent collection of a bunch of different pieces touching many aspects of Indigenous masculinities, but the pieces at times feel disparate and disconnected from one another. They're also of varying levels one after the other, which is both interesting and also kind of gives you whiplash as you move from community work to work delving really deep theoretically and then back again. I found the articles about artistic productions to be the most interesting, especially the chapter on female masculinity, but overall this is a pretty decent book with some great opportunities for assigning things.… (altro)