This Accident Of Being Lost
Songs And Stories
Book - 2017
A knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization.
This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love .
A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting "ARE THEY GETTING IT?"; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, This Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.
1487001274
9781487002923
1487002920


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Add a CommentI checked this e-book out so I'd have some poetry for a trip; the poem I read first, to the oldest tree in the world, and the short story following the poem were so compelling that I turned to the beginning and read it through, flying across Canada over the Great Lakes, Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan to Alberta. I appreciated the satire, the pointed truths that are laden with anger and grief. "They won't change and we won't change and no amount of talking fixes that. They want a beach. We want rice beds. You can't have both. They want to win. We _need_ to win. They'll still be white people if they don't have the kind of beach they want. Our kids won't be Mississauga if they can't ever do a single Mississauga thing." "This week alone I've already googled "games white people play at birthday parties" (and then learned to leave out the "white people" part because white people think of them as just birthday parties)." We need to be confronted with the reality of being occupiers, causing occupation anxiety. I'll look for other books by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
Gotta love this dame! Pissed off, articulate, insightful, irreverent and funny as an angry chicken at a Sunday-school picnic. Imagery that leaps off the page and stings like a handful of wasps.
Her send-up of a ballet mom (Tidy Bun) and Calgary's great flood broke me up, while at the other end of the spectrum, Seeing through the End of the World is just about the rawest, most deeply personal and moving bits of prose one is likely to encounter.
I loved the lyricism of her writing, and the power of her voice. I never knew what was coming next, and I really enjoyed the ride.
Simpson uses fiction as a vehicle to tell the truth.
And when fiction feels true, or real, it makes it all that much better. Her short fiction has distinctive multiple voices but I can feel her author’s touch in all of them.
Her writing was so commanding but she felt so comfortable in her prowess. I loved this book.