Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada

I checked out Komasket. It was fun. But I was really tired because of the sinkhole. My drive was not actually longer due to the sinkhole (I don't think) but the idea that a pothole on a highway could actually be a giant underground hole requires some time and energy to process. Still processing. 

Lately, when driving through Hope I stop by the Silver Creek gas station which has the best Nanaimo bars. Yes, even better than the Nanaimo bars in Nanaimo. But for this trip, as I was taking highway one and was already in downtown Hope anyways, I stopped in at the Blue Moose for coffee and quiche. Delicious, as always. 

My current read is Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada, edited by Heather Macfarlane and Armand Garnet Ruffo, and published in 2016. It includes 26 essays from Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars which explore Indigenous literary criticism. The book itself contains introductory content, and then each section also contains an introduction by the editors. These little introductions create cohesion within the book. 

It has taken me a relatively long time to read this book. Every time I sit down, I read a section, and then my brain is tired. On average the sections are less than 15 pages long, so at first I was a little perplexed as to why it was taking so long to read. I reflected, and realized that it is because of the inherent diversity of Indigenous approaches to literary criticism. 

If you were to take, for example, an anthology of sociological writing, there would be some core underlying concepts that the book is based on, which originate from a specific time and place, and from a specifical cultural lens on the world. There are core beliefs that undergird the work - such as a belief that we can study society systemically or that there is value in studying society systemically. And often, core disciplinary touchstones that we all recognize as foundational. That is what would make the book sociological. And then each essay would be tied together by some or all of these things. 

But this book is diverse in that it includes people from a broad range of places. In spite of the name, the essays are geographically broader than Canada (N. Scott Momaday) and also broader than people Indigenous to Canada (e.g. Thomas King). Culturally, there are a number of Indigenous groups represented, as well as non-Indigenous people, and everyone brings in their own cultural background in different ways. Plus, the authors are not all educated in a single discipline. And even the ones that are educated in literary criticism have differing ways of confronting colonialism within their discipline. So each chapter requires one to assume a completely new frame. And that's why I can't speed read this book. This is not a complaint. It is a book that can be savored intellectually. This is also implicitly Indigenous epistemology - unconstrained by disciplines, reflective of land-based knowledges, diverse, and dynamic. 

I'm a sucker for familiarity, so of course my favourite reads are chapters by people who's work I am already familiar with (Jeannette Armstrong, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Lee Maracle, Emma LaRocque). In some cases, I have even read the essays itself before, but when I encounter it again it is like seeing an old friend. And there were some voices in here which were new to me, and that is always welcome. 

In the acknowledgements the authors speak to how they canvassed other scholars to ask which essays they use to teach, and that is how they came up with this compilation. 

A notable absence in the book is how to respond to/engage with the TRC Calls to Action, because the book was published shortly after they were released (and so likely in the works before the TRC Calls to Action were released). I don't think that is a shortfall of the book. Any book is a snapshot of a conversation at a specific point in time. There is content in the book about residential schools and reconciliation, though. 

It is a good primer on engaging with Indigenous literature. It is definitely not a how-to guide. Rather, it is food for thought so that one can develop their own approach to Indigenous literary criticism. I did not try to do literary criticism during my PhD because I was using hermeneutics. So I feel like because I am emerging from a period of intensely not doing literary criticism, what I knew before is fragile and I am having to learn everything I knew about it again, but of course, in a different way because I am a different person now than I was when I previously spent time reading literary criticism. It is a little bit challenging but in a good way.