Celia's Song

December 15, 2014
This novel is the seventh work of fiction from one of Canada's most acclaimed aboriginal authors and critics. Maracle, author of Ravensong and Daughters are Forever, is an elder from Sto:lo Nation (The People of the River) on the West Coast of Canada. This story is narrated by Mink, who bears witness to the crisis that follows the suicide of dreamer-seer Celia's son, Jimmy. The structure takes on the character of Celia's dreams, "scattered moving pictures, disconnected from current time," a format that Maracle expertly uses to tell of the history of contact with the Europeans. Beginning with Celia's great-great-grandmother being renamed Alice in exchange for medicines, Celia's visions trace the effects of colonization, beginning with the medicine that did nothing for the small-pox that came with the newcomers blankets, through the horrors of residential schools, down to the present day. Mink insists that bearing witness to the past and present is of great importance, and unflinchingly does so, along with Celia and her nephew Jacob. Celia's scattered images coalesce into a hauntingly beautiful narrative and eventually into a way forward from the pain. Maracle in no way suggests that the answers to Canada's colonial past are clear, but she tells a fiercely honest and wonderfully compassionate story.