Part 4: Continuing to Channel my Disappointment in TVL by recommending queer & poc written horror (and other genre fiction). Today's pick is Cherie Dimaline.
Cherie is a Métis Nation writer, who writes folklore horror, dystopian fiction, fantasy, young adult books, and more. Werewolf preachers, feminist witches, colonizing bone harvesters, queer ghost romance, queer secret gardens, I never know what I'm going to get with her or what to expect other than that the story is absolutely going to be filled with political metaphors, which is my shit. She explains in this short interview the importance of stories and how it is a way for her family and people to "carry home" despite being removed from their own land repeatedly. It's a repeated theme in her work.
Read:
The Marrow Thieves: A Young Adult, dystopian novel that's short but impactful. The book is about a future where white folks are incapable of dreaming so they round up indigenous folks and harvest their marrow in order to dream again. It's an apt metaphor and it is HEAVY. Fortunately, the novel does not spend any real time inside of the facilities/metaphor for reservation schools. It instead focuses on a group of survivors on the run to avoid or escape these places. It's not a cynical read but there are sacrifices and you will lose characters you love. CW info near the end of the post.
If you'd like to learn more about reservation schools, I highly recommend Connie Walker's podcast "Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's" which follows her investigation into her father's residential school abuser (who her former police officer father beat nearly to death when he pulled the priest over). She won a Pulitzer for it for good reason. She speaks to a lot of her family who really contend with repressed memories and how the residential school system enacted cycles of abuse that they are trying to break. It's heartbreaking but very much worth it and yes, she talks to the priest who likely abused her father.
Also, also, I recommend the tv show Reservation Dogs' Deer Lady episode in season 3. You could watch it as a stand alone, but obviously you'd get more out of it with the whole show. It is an creative, terrifying, and devastating depiction of what it likely felt like for children in reservation schools, who were stripped of their language and culture. No actual scenes of CSA but heavily hinted at. There is a somewhat satisfying ending but it's a bit hollow like most revenge typically is. It's a beautiful episode that kept me up all night crying and angry.
Empire of Wild: If you like a little folk horror, this one's for you. It's a story about the Rougaroux myth and follows a Métis woman, Joan, searching for her husband, Victor, who disappears after they have a fight. Two years later, She tracks him down with the help of her 12 year old nephew named Zeus. They discover Victor is preaching for white evangelical christians in order to convert people in their community. In this book, the myth of the Rougaroux centers on a werewolf like creature who trolls around indigenous communities to prey on and change boys and men who disrespect their women, land or communities. I won't spoil the direction it's going in but know that it is eerie, political, and even a little horny.
VenCo: Do you like witches? Of course, you like witches. What are you? A Puritan? Lucky St. James, orphan of a "badass Métis good-times girl" and her grandmother Stella, are about to be evicted. Lucky is summoned via magic spoon to be one of seven witches in the Venco coven. Lucky and her grandmother are sent on a U.S. road trip to find the 7th witch before the witch hunter, Jay Christos, finds her first. It has horror, fantasy, magical realism, comedy, everything.
To Read: Haven't read these yet but they're on the list:
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls: YA. A teen girl hangs out in the cemetery her mother is buried in a lot, so much so that rumors start to spread that its haunted. Con artist ghost tour shenanigans ensue in order to save her father's crematorium business and continue to live near her mother's grave. She meets a real ghost. Friendship and queer love ensue. Haven't read it yet so I can't tell you more than what goodreads told me but it's definitely on the list.
Hunting by Stars: Sequel to The Marrow Thieves. I don't even want to give away the basic summary online as it would spoil aspects of the first book for you.
Into the Bright Open: YA book described as a queer YA reimagining of "The Secret Garden." Color me intrigued.
Some Notes:
If you want to see the other recs, just click the "lottafeelingsinhere recs" tag. Also, if you'd like to make other rec suggestions, please do!
Rather than try to remember every single CW warning I can think of for books I may have read years ago, I recommend checking out: https://triggerwarningdatabase.com/ Most of the books I recommend are the type of books that take real world political horrors and turn them into metaphorical monsters. So they're all pretty upsetting.
I know I said I'd stop clogging up the iwtv/tvl tags with this so I'm sticking to the tvl critical one bc I know ppl in that tag enjoy being literate. If you're tired of seeing this pop up in the tag tho, block "lottafeelingsinhere recs" or block me entirely :)
Happy Native American Heritage and Indigenous History Month! We’re celebrating, as we do, with books by Indigenous authors, starring Indigenous characters. (Note: Despite the title of the post, these books include indigenous characters from all over.) While the usual affiliate links are included, you’re strongly encouraged to order from the Native-owned Birchbark Books where available!
Picture…
Another crosspost from my Instagram! This time for International Women's Day! As far as I know, all of these authors identify as women, but please let me know if I'm wrong!
Details of the authors and their books under the cut, because this would be a long post otherwise
Kai Cheng Thom, author of From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea by (illustrated by Kai Yun Ching), Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World, and A Place Called No Homeland
Darcie Little Badger, author of Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to Earth and contributor to Love After the End: An Anthology of Two Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edited by Joshua Whitehead and Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time edited by Hope Nicholson
Angeline Boulley, author of The Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed
NK Jemisin author of the Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky), The City We Became, Far Sector (illustrated by Jamal Campbell), How Long 'til Black Future Month?, and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Seanan McGuire, author of Into the Drowning Deep (under a pseudonym) and The Wayward Children series (Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Beneath the Suger Sky, In an Absent Dream, Come Tumbling Down, Across the Green Grass Fields, Where the Drowned Girls Go, and Lost in the Moment and Found)
Octavia Butler, author of Kindred, The Earthseed Duology (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), and Fledgling
Talia Hibbert, author of The Brown Sisters Trilogy (Get a Life, Chloe Brown; Take a Hint, Dani Brown; and Act Your Age, Eve Brown)
Rebecca Roanhorse, author of the Between Earth and Sky Trilogy (of which I have read Black Sun and Fevered Star), Race to the Sun, and Tread of Angels and contributor to Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids edited by Cynthia Lietich Smith
Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves Duology (The Marrow Thieves and Hunting by Stars), Empire for Wild, and Funeral Songs for Dying Girls
I have also read the Marvel Indigenous collection that Little Badger and Roanhorse contributed to and McGuire's Ghost Spider series, but as Marvel continues to support Isreal, I continue to not support or promote Marvel
Currently Reading: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, narrated by Meegwun Fairbrother
A book I've been meaning to reading ever since it came out and when I had a 2.5 hour drive to a conference yesterday, and back, decided to see if my local library had an audiobook and they did! Love my local library.
During a time of great climate change, Frenchie and his family, both blood and found, are running. Running from the schools, running from the government, running from those who no longer dream. They run because they can dream, and those who do no dream wish to take Frenchie and his families' dreams for themselves.
If you know your history, you know that the residential schools have broken up more families for the sake of appearance and assimilation. And when these new schools seek to literally bleed Frenchie and his families dry, they have to keep moving. Staying ahead while keeping not only themselves but their culture alive.
Some books I read recently that are CONSTANTLY going to be on my mind forever:
Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli - on a stormy night, four kids in a small town set out in the drainage tunnels beneath the old mill to kill the monster that dragged their friend to his death. On another stormy night, four teenagers in a small town set out in the drainage tunnels to kill the monster that has been living inside all of them all along. The amount of overlap is not especially surprising.
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimalene - Winifred lives in a cemetery, specifically in the attic of the attached building, with her widowed father who runs the crematory, under threat of eviction if the cemetery director can't make up the money to keep her dad employed. She's outcast except for Jack, her best friend who she's developed a serious crush on, and has accidentally become the origin for rumors that the cemetery is haunted - something she has the idea to monetize to save her dad's job and her home. The idea only solidifies after her discovery of a real ghost from the ravine behind the graveyard. But after she gets to know Phil - the ghost of a similarly outcast teen from decades past - she questions whether her scheme is really worth it.
These are both YA books in different genres - Lockjaw is supernatural horror with a focus on police corruption and queer, particularly trans, identity; Funeral Songs is coming-of-age with teen paranormal romance and a focus on queer and indigenous identity. Both these books deal a lot in themes of prejudice, queerness, race, failure of the system (or alternately the system working exactly how it was designed and screwing over minorities), and obviously death. Both made me laugh and cry a lot. Both are eerie and tragic but hopeful, and very queer. Check them out if you get the chance!
