ReReading Catharine Parr Traill: Stranging the Familiar is a decolonizing memoir and a Truth and Reconciliation project, building on the life jolt Dorothy experienced on re-reading CPT’s 1852 children’s story Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains during the pandemic lockdown. Sixty-five years after last hearing her father read it aloud over several successive Sundays, Dorothy owns the “truth” of her unaware complicity in Canada’s colonization project. She exposes the colonizer messages in Canadian Crusoes—messages that support white supremacy and the Doctrine of Discovery, which must have been “read” into her very cells as a child. Dorothy faces up to the contradictions that her revered “floral godmother” represents. Without missing a beat, CPT moves from racialized stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples as stupid, uneducable, dirty, bloodthirsty, and uninventive to her positive portrayals of the Mohawk maid Indiana whose Indigenous knowledge carries the three Settler Canadian Crusoes through three winters on the Rice Lake Plains.
Use Coupon code for preorder and local pickup U86YTNH6 and to pickup your copy at St. George’s Chapel on Sept. 30. If you are unable to attend and wish to order – please continue for regular shipping to be applied
ReReading Catharine Parr Traill: Stranging the Familiar is a decolonizing memoir and a Truth and Reconciliation project, building on the life jolt Dorothy experienced on re-reading CPT’s 1852 children’s story Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains during the pandemic lockdown. Sixty-five years after last hearing her father read it aloud over several successive Sundays, Dorothy owns the “truth” of her unaware complicity in Canada’s colonization project. She exposes the colonizer messages in Canadian Crusoes—messages that support white supremacy and the Doctrine of Discovery, which must have been “read” into her very cells as a child. Dorothy faces up to the contradictions that her revered “floral godmother” represents. Without missing a beat, CPT moves from racialized stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples as stupid, uneducable, dirty, bloodthirsty, and uninventive to her positive portrayals of the Mohawk maid Indiana whose Indigenous knowledge carries the three Settler Canadian Crusoes through three winters on the Rice Lake Plains.
