Launched in 2021 by the Hannenorak bookstore, the I Read Native initiative invites readers to discover the literature of the First Nations of the 1er to June 30, which is National Aboriginal History Month. In tune with the event, Éditions Hannenorak has just launched the Solstice collection, which offers “short texts, awakening words, a radiant presence, in the image of our awakening”.
The honor of inaugurating this collection goes to the two spokespersons for I Read Native, JD Kurtness, novelist to whom we owe revenge (2017) and Aquariums (2019), both published by L’Instant meme, and to Jocelyn Sioui, man of the theater and author of the biographical essay Mononk Jules (Hannenorak, 2020). If the first has chosen to look towards a future that we hope will be very distant, and the second to return to an unknown page in the history of his Wendat ancestors, both sign a story where the humor is on point.
Mystical mushrooms
From the first pages of Welcome, Alyson, where she installs a dark portrait of the middle, JD Kurtness leads the reader on a false track. In fact, the disappearance of a 54-year-old woman seems to echo the fatal fate reserved for more than a thousand Aboriginal women and girls in recent years. However, it is not. Certainly, the corpses accumulate, but these are very singular…
“The corpse must have been there for at least two weeks, but there was no foul smell. On the contrary, a subtle and delicious perfume floated in the air. It reminded some of an aroma of lemon. To others, the coolness of cold winter days. As everyone was too embarrassed to comment on the good smell of what was considered a crime scene, it was not mentioned. »
It will soon be understood that the victims, which are multiplying exponentially beyond the borders of Alma, have been in contact with a species of mushroom with psychotonic effects. In the vein ofAquariumsan apocalyptic story set in the Arctic, Welcome, Alyson turns out to be a new dystopian with an ecological flavor where the author condemns, with a biting humor, the human race to undergo climatic upheavals that are at the very least intrusive.
Like a fish in water
in the tale Wriggling and agileJocelyn Sioui takes the reader off the beaten track by bringing him back to the XVIIe century in the footsteps of Auhaïtsic, second of the name — not to be confused with the first of the name, a young Frenchman and companion of the Récollet Nicolas Viel, who gave his to the Ahuntsic district.
Staging a thrilling canoe descent, the author happily mixes historical stories, Aboriginal folklore and Wendat legends. In doing so, he has fun making asides, detours, digressions… without losing the thread of the initial story.
“And there, you may be wondering: Jocelyn, what is in the famous Jesuit bag?
You are asking yourself the question at just the right time because I was going to answer it: in the famous leather bag was the precious calcined body of Jean de Bréboeuf.
I’ll tell you this story quickly, quickly, because you may not know what I’m talking about…”
While signing an original tribute to his roots, Jocelyn Sioui cheerfully mocks history as told from the point of view of white people.