How a Book Inspired Me to Finally Post Here
Here’s the first of many thoughts I have about Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow!
How it Started
So for the past few weeks, I’ve been reading a book called Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. I’m not gonna lie, I was reading it for English class and chose the book based on which covers looked nicest and which books were the shortest… It’s about a small Anishnaabe community experiencing a blackout — how they deal with a super harsh winter with no power. It’s centered around a family similar to the author’s: A man with a wife, multiple children and siblings. I was looking into the author and found out he’s also a big Leafs fan like me! Even though this was just for school, it ended up being super interesting and inspiring! Warning: there’s tons of spoilers.
The book made me feel empathy, and it inspired me to think about reconciliation.
On page 31, the main character Evan is talking to a younger teacher named Tammy. He’s complaining about the blackout and she replies saying “remember when nothing really worked”. Evan is thinking about this and the narration goes “[Evan] had spent most of his life without cell service and satellite TV, and his parents had grown up without any power at all”.
To me, it felt like Tammy was telling Evan not to take what he had for granted. This served as a reminder for me as well — it made me look around my room and go “damn I never really thought about all this stuff I had”. As Evan reflected on it, I reflected too. I realized we take a lot for granted that Indigenous peoples have struggled for.
As a non-Indigenous person, I don’t deal with his struggles but this part made me empathize.
What inspires me to want change and reconciliation is this empathy in spite of my privilege.
In fact, the best example of this is this blog! I’m posting this school project for a reason. I got the idea of actually posting this on my platform after feeling this empathy. I felt like there was something I should do. That I should share this feeling with others, help them learn and be better. So, stay tuned for the next blog!
