Finding Healing in the North: Through Black Spruce

I had read Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I re-read it last week as part of some final adjustments to my dissertation. I’m glad I had the chance to re-acquaint myself with Boyden’s work because it is sometimes easy to get carried away with criticizing authors for things extraneous to their writing. I don’t think I will be reading his latest book, The Orenda, any time soon, and I’m still not necessarily on-board with the way he has become a “celebrity” Native author (for a review from a friend of Boyden’s latest novel see here). However, Through Black Spruce is a genuinely good read.  I think I was paying more attention to form and style this time around and I was happily rewarded with an intricate narrative structure and a compelling narrative.

The novel centres on two protagonists – Will Bird, an alcoholic Cree bush pilot, and his niece Annie, both of whom live in Moose Factory/Moosonee – who are attempting to put their lives back together in the wake of drug-related violence. Annie’s sister Suzanne has gone missing with Gus Netmaker, the brother of Marius Netmaker who violently attacks Will because he believes that Will has been talking to the police about his drug dealing. You can already get a sense of how intertwined these two narratives are. The novel moves back and forth between Will’s narration and Annie’s. The catch is that for the most part, Will is in a coma after another vicious attack by Marius, while Annie begins to narrate her search for Suzanne while she is visiting Will in the hospital. At first glance this seems like an odd narrative structure, but this time around I really appreciated what it made possible in terms of story-telling. Boyden also does a good job using suspense to keep readers pushing along as he begins to weave the two seemingly separate narratives together by the story’s end.

What Through Black Spruce does quite well is represent the difficult reality that many northern indigenous communities face as drugs make their way north, ruining the communities by poisoning the youth. However, Boyden refuses to let tragedy rule and instead weaves a narrative of resilience and courage even as he remains true to the brokenness of his community. Like Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse,  this novel performs a kind of literary healing for its indigenous characters. This is not to say that it makes everything right in the real world, but it does open up a space to think and talk about the serious issues that many of Canada’s indigenous communities face.

For me, this is Boyden’s best work as I found Three Day Road too violent for my liking and I’m not sure I’ll pick up The Orenda based on some of the reviews/criticism it has attracted. I think his early collection of short stories, Born With a Tooth, was quite good, but Through Black Spruce presents Boyden at his best.

I recommend Through Black Spruce for fans of indigenous writing and those who like narratives set in Canada’s north.

Boyden, Joseph. Through Black Spruce. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2009. Print.

Well Worth Picking Up: Drown

Junot Diaz’s Drown is a short collection of short stories, but it is well worth your time. Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is an American writer with very strong ties to the Dominican Republic. This comes through throughout Drown as the characters are almost all Dominican and move about in the Dominican immigrant community. Diaz’s writing is almost informal and casual but this belies the emotional complexity that underpins each story as his characters struggle through living in the United States as a FOB (Fresh off the boat), homesickness, language issues, and poverty. There is Spanish sprinkled liberally on every page but Diaz includes a short glossary at the back (and what isn’t covered by this makes sense contextually).

Drown was Diaz’s first publication and it is very well put together. Where some short story collections feel like a disparate group of pieces, Drown has not only thematic unity but also an over-arching unity. The central character, Yunior, is the younger of two brothers whose father immigrated to the US many years earlier and only now brings over his (estranged) family. He had been cheating on his wife before, had to get married to get citizenship in order to bring his family over, and once they arrive cheats with another woman. So, Papi is a bad guy. However, the final story in the book, “Negocios” (Spanish for businesses), tells Papi’s side of the story and Diaz pulls out all the stops to make readers empathize with the father. This doesn’t make him a good guy, but it does give him a more depth and a greater sense of humanity.

I should also warn you that Drown is rough around the edges. Several stories deal with violence, drug dealing and using, sexual abuse, and there is language throughout. This does not take away from Drown‘s impact but is a central part of it. Yunior lives in a violent world because poverty is everywhere, not just in the Dominican ghettoes of New York but also back in the Dominican Republic.

If I had to pick a favourite story, it would be either “Negocios” or “Edison, New Jersey.” The latter story deals with a pair of pool-table delivery men who travel into the swanky, elite neighbourhoods of New York to set up expensive tables. The dialogue between Wayne and the unnamed narrator (possibly Yunior) is quite witty and fleshes out the conflicted world of race relations between low-paid Latin American workers and the wealthy whites who purchase the tables. The heart of the story deals with the narrator’s interactions with a Dominican domestic at one of the homes. She is possibly an illegal immigrant and is caught in a much worse position than the narrator. The narrator takes her back to the Dominican neighbourhood to help her escape her problem only to nearly lose his job. I liked this story because it was emotionally compelling and dealt with the difficulties of living in a “multicultural” US. “Edison, New Jersey” shows a very different side of the American Dream, one that is probably more realistic than the high dreams that most American immigrants have when arriving in the country.

I would highly recommend Drown to any lover of short fiction.

Diaz, Junot. Drown. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.