A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer was this year’s winner of Canada Reads, and if you’re not Canadian, I can tell you that’s a big deal. It’s a TV/radio program where five “personalities” (celebrities of some kind) debate which book the country should be reading right now. I was really happy to see a queer Indigenous book get this kind of attention, and now that I’ve read it, I can see why.
At first, I found it a little hard to get into the writing. As the afterword explains, this memoir came together through a series of structured interviews. Mary Louisa Plummer is a social scientist, and the tone is very matter-of-fact. Ma-Nee Chacaby’s life story, though, is engaging and memorable.
I recommend looking up the full content warnings for this book, because Ma-Nee has gone through so much in her life. There are descriptions of parental abuse, child sexual assault, domestic abuse, and more. Ma-Nee is a Two-Spirit disabled Indigenous woman who has faced so much systemic and individual cruelty. Her life is a glimpse into the generational effects of colonialism on Indigenous communities in Canada and how far that ripples out.
And yet, despite everything she endures, Ma-Nee is an incredibly kind and generous person. She is determined to take care of her family, including taking in distant relatives who have not offered her the same kindness. She adopts and raises so many kids and teens. She volunteers in various ways. After getting sober, she helps other people through their alcoholism. She fights for her Indigenous community even as she endures homophobia from them. She fights for her queer community even as she endures racism from them.
She’s also clear that the trauma she’s gone through has left a mark. Although she is resilient and forgiving, she discusses that she’ll never be completely at peace with what happened to her. Those experiences were damaging.
There are also moments of hope where she finds support and unexpected kindness. When she is beaten in a homophobic attack, a stranger—a taxi driver—jumps in to pull her out of the group of attackers and drives her to the hospital, likely saving her life. When she begins to lose her eyesight, a representative from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind shows up at her door every day until she finally lets them in, and they help to navigate this new aspect of her life.
It was infuriating to get to the end of the book and discover that after a lifetime of service, Ma-Nee was barely scraping by on insufficient government assistance. I hope that the attention this book has gotten has changed that situation for her.
It’s sometimes difficult to read Ma-Nee’s story, but this really is an important book for Canadians. It gives a little bit of the so recent history of this country and who is often left out of those stories.
