This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories
By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Poetry
Genre: contemporary, magical realism, memoir
Read on 2019-06-09
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
A collection of poems interspersed with fragments of prose that sometimes but not always weaves together.
After the first 20 pages or so I got the distinct feeling that I was reading raw unfiltered confessional writing coming straight from Simpson’s life/gut/heart. I don’t know what to make of that kind of writing sometimes but in Simpson’s case the end results are exceptionally brilliant. Here is a list of words that represent me trying to wrap my head around this book: genuine, honest, funny, bawdy, autonomous, contemporary, haunting, ghostly, evanescent, fearless, direct, unapologetic, vulnerable. Here are some additional words:
My favourite short stories were the ones on guerilla-tapping maple syrup in the Ontario suburbs and getting a gun license. I also loved the piece on a few good reasons to wear a long skirt that ends on possibly the best punchline ever written. In university I wrote an essay on Indigenous futurism in art - if there is such a thing as Indigenous presentism, this is it. It is brilliant precisely because it reads like the unfiltered thoughts and fears and reminisces of a real person of present day Ontario who is mulling over the structural ambiguities of their Banff writing residency during a biblical flood but also stalks their ex on Instagram. Banff Centre does residencies for my field too (art writing, emerging curator, blah blah) and I have had similar thought spirals of like, aren’t residencies for rich white people - which leads me to my next point.
Even though I’m not Nishnaabeg, so many parts of this book says things about Canada and settler colonialism and white people that I think and know and wish I had the wit and bravery to say so wittily and unapologetically. Living away not in Canada at the moment and existing sometimes in a weird trans-Pacific flow of capital/ist space, I enjoyed the familiarity of the references to Canadian politics and landmarks and also needed a reminder of what my position as a “Canadian” really is beyond just a shitty punchline re: American politics.
There were some instances where references to Nishnaabeg culture and language went over my head, which I really wasn’t bothered by. From reading Asian diasporic literature, I can recognize when something is and isn’t for me. Apart from that, it’s hard to compare the reading experience to anything else because I don’t read a lot of stuff like this. I did take my time mulling over the poetry though, because it’s how I was taught to read poetry in English class which is the only time I’ve ever really read poetry. I will also definitely be re-reading.
This book initially caught my attention because the cover is a photo of a work by Rebecca Belmore that I saw in person at the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal and presented on for an art history seminar. I have honestly never read anything by an Indigenous writer this side of the border which is an oversight on my part, and I also don’t read enough poetry/creative short form prose so I was very excited to read this and to support the author by ordering the book on Amazon (sorry bookstores but I live in NYC and I probably wouldn’t have been able to find it). And now I get to re-read and hopefully pass it on to friends :)
