This is a collaborative graphic novel anthology, each story highlighting a person or a historical moment in the Indigenous people’s fight to survive in Canada. As the foreword says, each Indigenous story is a post-apocalyptic survival tale, which makes every Indigenous person a hero. Each contribution is prefaced with a timeline of events, unavoidable evidence of the government’s ongoing determination to stamp out Native cultures and Native people, and the stories shine a light on atrocities that the government would prefer to paper over, as well as on heroes that should be more widely celebrated. The book actually reminded me most of Four Hundred Souls, Ibram Kendi and Keisha Blain’s collaborative history of African America; like that book, it draws an unmistakable line from the government’s first racist actions to those of today, and also leaves you awed by the strength of all those who fought and survived.
Day: May 7, 2022
Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper
This book was published in 1989, and I think if I had read it then (or in the mid 90s, more likely), I would have been really impressed by it. The worldbuilding is next level: the planet Grass is filled with waving long grasses undulating like seas, but the residents are viscerally horrified at the idea of building roads through it, so travel is done by air car. The aristocracy gather to ride regular day-long hunts accompanied by slavering not-hounds, mounted on terrifying barbed not-horses with which they have a weird mental dependency, chasing incorporeal not-foxes that they physically rejoice in killing, but don’t bring home to eat. Despite its utter weirdness Grass seems to be the only planet not falling victim to a plague attacking humanity on every other planet, so the ruling religious organization sends a family of horse-loving ambassadors to the planet to try to make inroads with the insular aristocracy. Oh there’s also a bunch of reject priests who seem unable to convert anyone on the planet, but spend their time either climbing towers of grass for fun, or excavating evidence of a doomed alien civilization that (like humanity) apparently failed to understand Grass enough to colonize it successfully. Despite the extremely futuristic setting, the social dynamics are very gendered: both on Grass and off planet, the men have all the authority, and the women have insight but little social power. There is nothing subtle about the messaging, either; there’s a LOT of heavy-handed philosophical discussion about the place of religion and humanity’s place in the ecosystem, and the characters are sketched so obviously that it’s very clear who you are and aren’t supposed to sympathize with. There are also some truly icky bits involving nubile young women (why is it always the young women) whose minds are wiped and end up little more than mental children in problematically mature bodies. I thought the beginning was promising, especially the creepy alien atmosphere of Grass, but then everything got muddled because Tepper had so very much to say and couldn’t resist going on about it at length, or erecting more strawman villains to take down. Mixed bag overall.