Othered

Evocative children’s literature keeps in mind the intrinsic sophistication and maturity that young readers possess.

In Monique Gray Smith’s novel Lucy and Lola, the author confronts sociocultural, interpersonal, and familial aspects of modern indigenous life through the eyes of young twin girls. Smith uses a careful yet visceral brush to paint the harsh history of residential schools and the exclusionary social subtext of alcoholism, confronting the heart of the reality without drenching the reader in overt detail. Exposing young readers to these truths recognizes their abilities to parse negative aspects of life while simultaneously imprinting the audience with the knowledge and tools for reconciliation built from these readings. This allows the reader to discern what their next steps should be from the characters and concepts they have been introduced to. Throughout the story, Gray Smith leaves packets of information that work toward building the young reader’s understanding of what positive reconciliation looks like.*

* Orthography in Canadian English throughout.

One of the first events in the novel that introduces readers to learned cultural bias concerns an interaction between the twins Lucy and Loly and a woman named Kate.

The twins are playing at the beach when they are approached by Kate. They mention to her that their mother, Mary, is “getting ready for the bar.” Although Lucy and Lola are referring to their mother studying hard in order to pass the bar exam and become a lawyer, Kate incorrectly assumes that Mary is getting ready for a night of binge drinking. Kate’s preconceptions likely stem from historical alcohol abuse in native cultures due to alcohol being a popular bartering item introduced to native populations by white colonialists. Herbert Locklear writes in “American Indian Alcoholism: Program for Treatment” that “there are many accounts of alcohol being deliberately used by white men as a bribe or intoxicating drug to gain certain concessions from ‘red men’.” Because of the novelty—not to mention the dangers—of alcohol being exploited to natives as a bribe item, legislation was enacted by the United States government to make liquor illegal to be trafficked by native people, an inherently discriminatory and bureaucratically imbalanced law that failed to be repealed until the 1950s. The introduction of the vice had already taken its toll, with “some experts estimating that alcoholism among American Indians [is] as high as 10 to 25 times greater than that of the non-Indian population” (Locklear, 203). Given that Locklear wrote this article in the late 1970s and all referenced research was current at the time of writing, the conclusion can be drawn that Kate would possess these preconceptions as she is described as a woman with mostly gray hair, pointing to the fact that she is middle-aged or older. While progress to mitigate the sting of alcoholism on indigenous families has been made in the decades since, Kate’s preconceived notion of “natives being alcoholics” is archaic and overtly disrespectful.

Lola understands quickly what Kate’s incorrect assumption entails and corrects it, but the negative conclusions about their loving mother Mary weighs on the two girls. The next scene shows Lucy and Lola talking through what feelings had bubbled up inside them after the conversation with Kate, a writing construction used fluidly and fluently throughout the novel to help explain the characters’ reactions and emotions. While the act of explaining feelings and expressing emotion to a trusted confidant is a lesson well-intentioned on its own, an interesting aspect of this scene is the fact that Lucy tells Lola that “[she] need[s] to smudge” to release the emotions the conversation with Kate brought up (Gray Smith, 33). Previously in the book, Mary describes smudging as a way to “cleanse [their] spirits [...], help[ing] to take away bad feelings and it helps [them] to feel peaceful, clear-headed, and hopeful” (Gray Smith, 14). The author provided this cultural definition of smudging earlier in the book so that readers would be able to reference the spiritual and emotional weight that smudging releases for those who participate in the practice wholeheartedly, as well as describing it in terms that can be carried over to the casual racism and bigotry the characters experienced through Kate.

Through these scattered clues and sudden connections, Gray Smith puts a tangible trust in the abilities of young readers to understand these abstract and quite possibly foreign ideas.

First, Lucy and Lola are shown to recognize the spiritual importance of smudging through their knowledge of the practice as well as their own methodical carrying-out and appreciation of the practice. Soon after, the interaction with Kate takes place, showing the reader how children can pick up on and be affected by the microaggressions of the people around them. It is then explicitly spelled out to the reader why the twins were so hurt by Kate’s insinuations when Lucy asks Lola “do you think she thought mom was at the bar—the party bar—because we’re Native?” (Gray Smith, 32). When Kate comes back to their grandmother’s house looking for the girls, Lucy and Lola are given an opportunity to understand why Kate assumed such things about their mother, and to tell Kate how they feel about her assumptions. Kate wishes to apologize for her actions and even reveals to the reader how some prejudices stem from how individual people were raised, with Kate explaining “I was raised in a time where there were lots of judgements and prejudices about your people. Even though I’ve done lots of reading and have prided myself on not being racist, I realize now that I am… and I have prejudices” (Gray Smith, 38). 

The beauty in this scene comes from the reconciliation that Lucy and Lola accept from Kate, and how this acts as a model for reconciliation as a whole. Kate outlines the societal basis for why she thought and acted the way she did while making clear how ashamed she is for her assumptions, and Lucy outlines a model for moving past harmful mistakes like Kate’s in the future, saying “I didn’t like what you thought about my mom. It hurt. I hope you figure out why you had those thoughts, so you can change them, and maybe not hurt somebody’s feelings again” (Gray Smith, 38). Lucy is placing the agency for this societal paradigm shift into the hands of the one who wronged her and trusts that they will do something positive with their experience to avoid harming others. Readers pick up on the directness of Lucy’s wishes for Kate, the way that Kate recognizes her own racial prejudices, and the fact that Kookum—their grandmother—thanks Kate for her courage and dignity to rectify the wrong she had herself created. This is an important model: not blaming any psychosphere for one’s own actions or inactions, but instead realizing the agency each person has in breaking down these divisors for themselves and the people around them.

While Kate’s interaction with Lucy and Lola focuses on microaggressions and racial preconceptions, Gray Smith approaches the topic of Residential schools and alcoholism in a methodical manner, gradually leaving breadcrumbs of information to guide the reader through such an emotional and complex topic.

This gives the reader time to digest the facts and not feel like they’re wallowing in this dark subject, which appreciates that young readers may be more sensitive to the cultural horrors colonialists committed, yet respects these readers’ ability to understand heavy and historically taboo information. The first time that Residential schools are mentioned is not until more than 40 pages into the book, after the interaction with Kate occurs. Interestingly, this is also the first time it is ever confirmed that Kookum herself struggled with alcoholism, a beneficial strategy on the part of the author to not obfuscate the emotions behind the interaction with Kate by blatantly telling the readers beforehand that alcoholism did exist in Lucy and Lola’s family. While Kookum is speaking about the experience of her daughter being sent to Residential school, she doesn’t provide much detail about what the school was like or what happened there other than being referred to by a number and subjected to cruelty from the administration. Instead, Kookum focuses on the emotional trauma both she and her daughter endured by being separated from one other, a trauma that did not heal even after her daughter was returned to her (Gray Smith, 43). This is an incredibly important moment because it offers another important information point about reconciliation: the effects of harmful practices and cultural separations last far beyond the fading of the catalyst. This is also shown through Kookum’s desire “to get the parts of me back that the Residential school took” (Gray Smith, 46). 

The “parts of her” that the Residential school took may not only be referring to her cultural identity and connection with her ancestry, but also to her sobriety. In a report by Beatrice Medicine in the Wicazo Sa Review, Medicine notes that “ambivalence from loss of traditional heritage and blocked access to white culture [...] led to normlessness and confusion in [female] role identity. This is often seen as an impetus to alcohol consumption” (Medicine, 86). The only alcoholism mentioned in the book comes verbatim from Kookum herself, who is female. As Kookum was a single mother who lost her child to the Residential school system, it makes sense that this loss would serve as the catalyst for a dramatic loss of her own identity, especially when she is unsure of how to care for her vastly changed child upon their reunion after eight years apart. As mentioned earlier, alcohol was a form of manipulation introduced by white colonialists that fundamentally fragmented nuclear family and societal systems in indigenous populations. Therefore, the defiant act of Kookum reclaiming her past lies both in her cultural identity and her sobriety. In this section, the author quietly slips in another important concept for young readers: bittersweetness. While Kookum laughs to herself for going on a tangent during her story, the girls laugh as well, commenting that “the laughter was healing. It didn’t take away from the story Kookum was telling, instead it helped” (Gray Smith, 45). Positivity and determination in the face of incredible adversity is a virtue that Kookum and the girls clearly hold dear, and it is important for young readers to see that people are still able to smile, laugh, and love each other even after the hardships they experienced.

The subsequent times that Residential schools are mentioned in the story mostly revolve around Lucy and Lola’s mother and her connection to Kookum that resulted from Residential schools. This is done through the motif of The Witness Blanket, an art project made of parts of destroyed Residential schools by Carey Newman, a renowned First Nations artist. Through the close focus on the relationship between Mary and Kookum, more of the specifics behind Residential schools are revealed to the reader, beginning when Mary is listing some of the things she endured while being forced to attend the Residential school. “There was no one there to take care of me when I was upset or afraid or lonely or when I just needed a hug. All those other things that happened, the physical abuse, the maggots in our food, being told I was a dirty and good-for-nothing Indian. The hunger and everything else, well those hurt, but they didn’t hurt as bad as feeling lonely. And unloved” (Gray Smith, 63). According to a study by Merle Taimalu et. al. in the Social Indicators Research Journal, the most prevalent fears in preschool aged children—Mary’s age when she was taken into her Residential school—are “fears of animals, fears of the dark, and fears of imaginary creatures” (Taimalu et. al, 53). The fear of loneliness or isolation is not even a common fear in young children, as they assume love and attention will be paid to them by caregivers or family. This is one of the main reasons Mary and Kookum were so deeply affected by their respective experiences with Residential schools, and possibly the main reason Kookum didn’t know how to give Mary love and affection after her return from the school. While not mentioned in the text, both Kookum and Mary would have been intensely and adversely affected by their trauma.

While speaking on the effect of story’s presentation and structure in the context of reconciliation, it would be a mistake to characterize the narrative or ideas conveyed as simple or straightforward.

In Billy-Ray Belcourt’s essay “Fatal Naming Rituals,” he speaks on a collection of poetry he wrote being labeled as “simple” in a literary review. To be labeled as simple with positive connotations “steals breath from the bodies of those who are roped into the unlivable and racialized terrain of simplicity” (Belcourt). The appreciation of superfluous and comparatively languid prose is inherently a white appreciation, brought into the world of literary criticism on the backs of centuries upon centuries of wordy white authors. “There is nothing fundamentally poisonous about ‘simplicity,’” Belcourt writes, “but its use is bathed in a tradition of wordiness [...] that traps Indigenous writers in the poverty of plainness” (Belcourt). In rereading these texts with special consideration to the authorship of this paper, I personally was wary of my own cultural background in dissecting the language and storytelling of an indigenous author with a cultural background so far removed from my own upbringing. However, through my own work with Gray Smith’s text in conjunction with the notes on indigenous literary criticism from Belcourt, I can say with certainty that the presentation of topics in Gray Smith’s novel is both impressively straightforward while being incredibly complex. While understandably cautious in the ways that it presents information to the young audience, Gray Smith’s story construction and presentation through thematic structuring and subtext offers a profound appreciation for the reader’s talent while simultaneously providing a network of referential information cleanly embedded within the text. The vocabulary is not the point; if it were this story would not be presented in the form of children’s literature. The messages being conveyed, however, are more salient. As Belcourt writes, “it is not that we need to be welcomed into the wasteland of the human, to be made fit for the operations of violence that uphold it, but a remaking of the world, one not ruled by [...] white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy” (Belcourt).

Through the course of reading Lucy and Lola, the reader has seen the hardships, trauma, and adversity that native people endure, have endured, and continue to endure. Monique Gray Smith has packaged these aspects of modern native life into a beautifully cohesive map for cultural reconciliation, showing the past, present, and future work that needs to be done while providing a smaller framework of individual reconciliation through the character of Kate. The author has a vast respect for the abilities of young readers and puts faith in them as the next generation of reconcilers who will work toward equality and understanding with each and every interaction with any Othered culture.

— Gabriel Stenson Pehrson, 2018

Works Cited*

Belcourt, Billy-Ray. “Fatal Naming Rituals.” Hazlitt, 31 July 2018, hazlitt.net/feature/fatal-naming-rituals.

Gray-Smith, Monique “Lucy and Lola.” The Journey Forward: Novellas on Reconciliation, by Julie Flett et al., McKellar & Martin Publishing Group Ltd., 2018.

Locklear, Herbert H. “American Indian Alcoholism: Program for Treatment.” Social Work, 1977, doi:10.1093/sw/22.3.202.

Medicine, Beatrice. “American Indian Women: Mental Health Issues Which Relate to Drug Abuse.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 1993, p. 85., doi:10.2307/1409191.

Taimalu, Merle, et al. “Self-Reported Fears As Indicators Of Young Childrens Well-Being In Societal Change: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Indicators of Children’s Well-Being Social Indicators Research Series, pp. 109–136., doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9304-3_6.

* Trust me—I can do hanging indents, but SquareSpace gets angry when I try.