Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi'kmaq Poet (American Indian Lives) - Softcover

Joe, Rita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803275943 ISBN 13: 9780803275942

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1996

Synopsis

Here is the enlightening story of an esteemed and eloquent Mi’kmaq woman whose message of “gentle persuasion” has enriched the life of a nation.

Rita Joe is celebrated as a poet, an educator, and an ambassador. In 1989, she accepted the Order of Canada “on behalf of native people across the nation.” In this spirit she tells her story and, by her example, illustrates the experiences of an entire generation of aboriginal women in Canada.

Song of Rita Joe is the story of Joe’s remarkable life: her education in an Indian residential school, her turbulent marriage, and the daily struggles within her family and community. It is the story of how Joe’s battles with racism, sexism, poverty, and personal demons became the catalyst for her first poems and allowed her to reclaim her aboriginal heritage. Today, her story continues: as she moves into old age, Joe writes that her lifelong spiritual quest is ever deepening.

About this title

About the Author

Celebrated Mi’kmaq poet Rita Joe is much in demand as a storyteller and spokesperson for First Peoples across Canada and the United States. Her poetry has been widely anthologized, in particular in educational materials. Born in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton Island, Rita Joe now resides on the Eskasoni Reserve on the Bras d’Or Lakes.

From the Back Cover

Straight from the heart, Rita Joe tells the story of her remarkable life: her tumultuous childhood in foster homes, education in an Indian residential school, turbulent marriage and daily struggles with prejudice, sexism and poverty. Over time, these battles led her to discover her poetic voice which helped her reclaim her Aboriginal heritage. In the fascinating final part of her story, Rita Joe writes movingly about old age, her lifelong spiritual quest and the promise of renewed hope and healing.

Reviews

The too-modest yet moving life story of a Canadian Indian writer, a member of the Mi'kmaq tribe. The youngest of seven children, Joe was born in 1932 on Cape Breton, in eastern Canada. Her parents were poor but happy; ``everybody was soft-spoken and gentle,'' she writes, ``even though we had such a sad lot.'' Joe does not say much about her home life, apart from quietly recalling that her grandmother blamed her for her mother's death, when the author was five, on account of Joe's difficult delivery. She touches only in passing on the foster homes she subsequently lived in (though she does note that a man in one of them sexually abused her). Nor do we learn much about the Indian Residential School she attended for four years; such schools proved traumatic experiences for generations of Indians. Indeed, Joe's memoir is shot through with a curious reticence, and it is clear that the author is not entirely comfortable with telling us about her experiences, good or bad. She admits, but with considerable reserve, to having been a battered wife for many years of her long marriage; as her husband drank more and more, she writes, ``the beatings he gave me became a more frequent part of my life.'' (Those beatings stopped when a Mi'kmaq elder shamed Joe's husband- -whom the author recalls with nothing but love and forgiveness-- into quitting his abuse.) Joe is more forthcoming about her almost accidental success as a writer: She began to write in her late 30s, after bearing nine children, contributing humorous columns to a Mi'kmaq-language newspaper, and has since produced several books of verse that are well known in Canada. ``You cry too much,'' an Anglo editor once complained of Joe's writing. One wishes that she had cried a little more in this spare memoir, in which so much goes unspoken. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In what might very well be the year of the memoir, it often seems that every literate Baby Boomer is putting his or her reminiscences on paper. Joe is quite another memoirist altogether: poet, educator, and ambassador for Native people, she here recounts in both poetry and prose her struggles with racism, sexism, and poverty as well as her search for identity. Since the Native and non-Native worlds make such different demands, the quest for personal understanding is no easy one; addressing her non-Native audience, Joe says, "It is hard for you to see our face, and sometimes it is hard for us to see ourselves." In late life Joe finds solace in religion, but her continuing search for her true self still shows in the writing, which is quiet, almost dreamy on first reading, yet edgy beneath its surface calm. For specialized collections.?David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Remember: I found the good," Rita Joe says in the introduction to her sometimes harrowing, always inspiring autobiography. "Look at us and you, too, will find the good." Her account proves true to her introductory words, for where another might emphasize the poverty and prejudice she has encountered as a Native Canadian, Joe makes of her story a moral tale in which each difficulty hides a lesson. She learns strength and self-reliance from the multiple short-term foster homes of her childhood; she learns to value family when she gives up her firstborn for adoption; she learns how necessity can lead to beauty as her poems, forged from the pain of her life, gain her an increasing audience. In addition, this is not a conventional prose autobiography, for Joe wraps the prose around many meaty, direct poems that embellish and expand upon the narrative. Patricia Monaghan

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803275943
• ISBN 13: 9780803275942
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 199