The Story of how Paulette Jiles got her nickname of Paunets i.e. Shabby Little Sioux

“There’s no L in Ojibway, so ‘Paul-ette’ becomes ‘Paun-ette,’ A puan is a Sioux.
“Why are you laughing Nathan?”
“You’d just have to know the language! It’s too complicated!!” He fell into frank, outright laughter.
[…]
“What about this Sioux business?” I said.
“It’s just that puan means something like, oh, ‘weird foreigner.’ And ette becomes ess , that’s a diminutive suffix that implies something kind of messy and worn-out. Ha ha ha! Shabby Little Sioux! Oh, sorry, excuse me.” He got up and laughed himself out...
- from Chapter 20 (pgs. 129-130 in the 400 page Anchor Canada edition)

"North Spirit" is Paulette Jiles's 1995 memoir of the several years in the 1970s that she spent in northern Ontario after moving to Canada in the late 1960s from Missouri. She had been a poet early in her writing career but has subsequently taken to writing historical fiction. Her latest novel "News of the World" from 2016 seems to have been a breakout book for her based on the number of its ratings and reviews.

I especially enjoy fish-out-of-water stories and learning about other languages and cultures and "North Spirit" covered all of those bases for me. It is fairly wide-ranging as it covers all of the various jobs that Jiles had over several years included stints as radio station assistant, newspaper photographer & reporter and theatre playwright. The framing device of the story is a theatre tour of northern Ontario communities for which Jiles was the play writer and where the young cast included the Canadian actor Graham Greene who went on to a wide-ranging career of various TV and film roles. Jiles used her learned radio station experience to create the stage work.

The several dozen chapters are often self contained stories of Jiles's adventures in First Nations communities where she learned the basics of Cree and Ojibway languages and the writing of their syllabics. Her respect for the elders in the communities especially rings through as well as her enjoyment of the story-telling of myths and legends. Her self-deprecatory humour also helps in endearing us to her personality. The opening quoted story here is a great example of that and also gives an idea of the spirit and tone of the book.

My thanks to good friends Liisa and Martin who gifted this book to me! Meegwetch! ( )

This is a stunning beautiful piece of story telling that is simple and direct - like an arrow to the heart - at the same time richly complex, the author's deep poetic contemplation on cultural change made inevitable as oral traditions give way to modern media. Full of humor as she bumbles her way and takes her place, a guest at the table of a culture older than written history. I love this book and I love this author's mind. ( )

Brilliant and captivating, page-turning story based on Jillette's 7 years among the Anishinabe First Peoples in the North of Ontario, Canada. Explores the clash between technology and tradition with insight, humour and compassion, and how the legacy of the oral traditions can and will endure. Full of the tales the author heard, the traditions surrounding them, and experiences the author had. I loved this book. ( )