Tag Archives: miscarriage

Memoir of a Queer Coast Salish Punk: Red Paint by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

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The cover of Red Paint

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“I no longer wish to be called resilient. Call me reckless, impatient, and emotional. Even Indigenous. Call my anything other than survivor. I am so many more things than brave.”

One of my favourite books I’ve read this year is Thunder Song, LaPointe’s newest collection of essays, so I knew I wanted to go back read her memoir, Red Paint. While it took me a few chapters to get into, I ended up liking Red Paint just as much. This is a memoir that brings you right into the darkest, most painful moments of her life, including sexual assault, her marriage dissolving, and her miscarriage. It’s powerful and vulnerable, and I’m so glad I picked it up.

I’m always grateful to writers who takes readers into these vulnerable moments. LaPointe describes her mental health struggles and the coping strategies she used—from denial to self medicating to ceremonies and traditional medicine—to survive.

She also lets us into her relationships, particularly the one with her husband, Brandon, and her first love, Richard. These are complicated, realistic relationships—I was angry and frustrated with Brandon alongside LaPointe, but he was not painted as a two dimensional villain. I also felt for Richard as LaPointe reached out to him for comfort and nostalgia while knowing he wanted more from her than she could give. These relationships are so human: complex and layered.

(Because this is the Lesbrary, I’ll say that LaPointe’s bisexuality and the women she’s dated are mentioned in two chapters and aren’t the focus of the book—the romantic relationships explored here are mostly with these two men.)

While Thunder Song has a throughline of music, Red Paint incorporates the stories of LaPointe’s ancestors, especially three Coast Salish women she’s descended from. She tells the story of Comptia, her ancestor who married a Scottish man after almost her entire Chinook village died from smallpox spread by colonizers. LaPointe tries to fill in the gaps in her story: why did Comptia marry him? How did she feel being the sole survivor in her family? How does Comptia’s story connect to hers, generations later?

Red Paint definitely solidifies LaPointe as an author I want to follow. These two books are not easy reads, because they describe some of the darkest moments of her life, but they’re beautifully written and ultimately hopeful. LaPointe finds strength in her culture, family, and spiritual practices, fighting to reclaim what colonialism has sought to erase.

I do want to give clear content warnings for childhood sexual assault, detailed description of a miscarriage, description of a suicide attempt, anti-Indigenous racism, and colonialism.

If you are in a place to read that content, I highly recommend this and Thunder Song, especially if you live on the west coast of Turtle Island. I can’t wait to see what LaPointe writes next.

Danika reviews Hazel’s Theory of Evolution by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

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Hazel’s Theory of Evolution by Lisa Jenn BigelowLisa Jenn Bigelow’s Starting From Here broke my heart and put it back together again. It’s one of my favourite queer YA books. I’m still waiting for the fan poster that has Colby, Cam (from The Miseducation of Cameron Post) and Ari (from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe) all laying in the beds of their respective pickup trucks, looking up at the stars together. (I am not an artist. I need someone to do this for me.) When Bigelow’s Drum Roll, Please came out, I was eager to pick it up. It lived up to her first: a bisexual/questioning middle grade novel that has more to do with friendship and divorce and finding your voice than treating her orientation as an Issue.

So, of course, I jumped on her newest middle grade book: Hazel’s Theory of Evolution. This one follows a character with two moms, but we’re not in the 90s anymore: that’s not the point of this story. Hazel has just moved schools, which means that she’s been split from her best friend–her only real social safety net. At her new school, she feels isolated and weird. No else seems to understand her respect for earthworms… Her feelings are vented in her Guide to Misunderstood Creatures. Meanwhile, she’s reluctantly making new friends, including Yosh, a sarcastic guy with a mohawk who uses a wheelchair. She’s also bumped into a familiar face from her old school, who is now going by a different name and pronouns.

The biggest tension in this book, though, is that Hazel’s mom is pregnant. Again. And everyone seems determined to be cheerful and optimistic about this–despite the fact that she’s already gone through two miscarriages that were emotionally devastating for the whole family. Hazel feels trapped, unable to voice her fear and anger that she’s chosen to get pregnant again, and unwilling to confide to anyone outside of the family. In health class, she adds the names of her two miscarried siblings onto her family tree–and then erases them. Adds them again. Erases them.

Bigelow is masterful at exploring complex relationships between characters, which makes this story shine. Hazel is flawed and frustrated, making assumptions and asking awkward questions, but always from a place of caring. As her friends start to show romantic interest in others, she feels even more lost. This is the first middle grade book that I’ve seen explore the concepts of asexuality and aromanticism. Like Drum Roll, Please, Hazel is still figuring herself out, but it’s affirming just to see that possibility brought up in a middle grade.

You don’t have to decide any of those things now. Life may surprise you. But whatever happens, whatever you decide is right for you, all of those things are okay. And when I say okay I mean good. There are so many good ways to be in this world.

Elinor reviews The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

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I have long-standing love for Ariel Levy’s work, so I was eager to read her memoir The Rules Do Not Apply. For those who’ve read her essay “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” about her miscarriage at 19 weeks pregnant, you have some idea what you’ll be getting in this book. Essentially, it’s a brutally sad story told gorgeously. The memoir gives context to Levy’s loss of her pregnancy, marriage, and home, all within a single month, and delves into her life before, during and after this central tragedy.

Much of the book explores Levy’s adventures as a successful writer, interviewing fascinating people all over the world, and how her work informed her ideas about gender, family, work, queerness, marriage, and a meaningful life. Alongside this is the story of Levy’s personal life, from a childhood spent witnessing her mother’s long-term affair and the dissolution of her parent’s marriage, to dating men and women as an adult. When Levy falls in love with and marries a woman before such a marriage was legally recognized, you can feel the heady excitement. Together the pair bought a home and wrestled with question when and how to become parents. Though Levy’s marriage was loving, it was complicated by Levy’s destructive affair with a creepy ex and her spouse’s increasingly serious drinking problem. Still, when they decide to have a child after many years together, she believes that they have things under control, that they’d weathered storms and gotten bad behavior out of their systems. Then the unthinkable happens and the story takes a turn Levy never expected.

Levy resists the cultural rules for women throughout her life, managing to have brilliant ambition, professional success, lust, love, adventure and a rich domestic life. But those are only a superficial rejection of the “rules” that the title references. This memoir rejects tidy lessons, platitudes, and the idea that loss is avoidable. Often in stories like Levy’s, the unstated rule is that it all works out in the end, that there’s a silver lining, or that everything happens for some ultimately rewarding cosmic reason. Levy refuses to pretty up her pain or to resolve the story neatly. Here, there is no happy ending. In fact, the book ends ambiguously, with Levy stepping out into an uncertain future.

The rawness and incredible writing draw you in, and leave you unsettled. You might want to line up something soothing after this. I was very glad I didn’t read it until after my child was born, because if I’d been pregnant or trying to get pregnant I would have been an anxious wreck reading this book. Having said that, I still highly recommend it. It’s a fascinating, honest, unique book.

Elinor Zimmerman is the author of Certain Requirements, which will be released by Bold Strokes Books in Spring 2018. Her website is ElinorZimmerman.com