Kiss of the Fur Queen (American Indian Literature & Critical Studies Series) - Hardcover

Highway, Tomson

3.9

2,731 ratings by Goodreads

9780806132365: Kiss of the Fur Queen (American Indian Literature & Critical Studies Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806132361 ISBN 13: 9780806132365

Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 2000

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"In his first novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen, noted playwright Tomson Highway tells the story of two Cree brothers who were severely abused at a Catholic residential school, and he uses the full transformative power of magic and myth, as well as a compelling traditional novel plot, to restore to them their dignity and, by implication, that of their people."—Toronto Globe and Mail

"Highway's novel vibrates with the force of the collision of two cultures, the long history of a people living at one with nature, and the violence of their enforced conversion to Christianity. Emotionally complex, witty, symphonic and sad, Kiss of the Fur Queen is a remarkable novel, filled with blood, guts, life and love."—Vancouver Sun

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From the Inside Flap:

In the 1950s, Abraham Okimasis becomes the first Indian ever to win the Trapper's Festival Dog Sled Race and, as tradition dictates, he is kissed by the festival's beautiful Fur Queen. Nine months afterward, Abraham's wife Mariesis gives birth to their son, Champion, in a tent on a trapline in snowy northern Manitoba. Later, three-year-old Champion watches his brother Ooneemeetoo come into the world in the same tent.

The boys grow up in a magical Cree Garden of Eden: stars, fish and caribou are their playmates; canoes and dogsleds transport their nomadic family. Joy and raucous laughter roll across the tundra with them. No English is spoken, no white people cross their path. And everywhere they go, the boys are accompanied by a photo of their father being kissed by the Fur Queen, their guardian angel.

At the age of six, Champion is hauled into a plane and whisked to a boarding school three hundred miles south, where he enters a Hell on Earth. His name becomes Jeremiah, and his language is forbidden. His brother later joins him at the school, where the two boys are abused by priests. As young men, they suffer the humiliation of racism on the streets of Winnipeg.

Wherever the brothers go, the Fur Queen -- a wily, shape-shifting trickster -- looks after them protectively. For Jeremiah and Gabriel (as Ooneemeetoo is now called) are destined to be artists. Through music and dance, the Okimasis brothers flourish in the world. Until tragedy sneaks up on them.

Kiss of the Fur Queen fuses Native story-telling techniques with European narrative form to create an engaging, funny, passionate, and triumphant novel of a uniquely Canadian experience: that of being a stranger in your own land.

From the Back Cover:

"Tomson Highway's vision is a marvel, and so is his willingness to undercut tragedy with pants-dropping humour." --Bronwyn Drainie, The Globe and Mail

"Tomson Highway writes in English, but he dreams in Cree, and his plays combine his knowledge of Indian reality in this country with classical structure and artistic language." --Books in Canada

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