From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle | Canadian Authors & Stories
If you haven't read the incredibly powerful 'From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless and Finding My Way', I highly recommend you do.
Parts of this memoir still haunt me, even though I read it over a year ago.
Canadian author Jesse Thistle is now an assistant professor in Humanities at York University in Toronto and a celebrated keynote speaker and husband. But his life didn't start there.
'From the Ashes' is Jesse's journey through his own history, from when he and his brothers were abandoned by their dad, to being taken in by his grandparents, through his struggles with addiction, homelessness and abuse, his time in and out of prison and then through his recovery and journey forward. It is an entirely heartbreaking, but ultimately triumphant story of his resilience.
It's Jesse's memoir, and I've read that he wrote it in part to help himself sort through what must have been a very traumatic and confusing past.
He and his brothers were separated from their mother, and from their Métis-Cree heritage, with only blurry memories of their past in Saskatchewan. When Jesse started going back to school for a history degree at York University, one of his assignments was a key point in his life - leading to his being able to reconnect with his family and his rich Indigenous heritage, as well as start him off on an important journey into research.
'Thistle's historical research has used his own past and identity as a way to examine the position of Metis people and culture within Canadian society, particularly around the idea of inter-generational trauma.' - Wikipedia
Really, I can't put everything in here, his whole story is so incredible, and the fact that he is, to this day, working on his PhD, teaching Indigenous history at York University and helping other Indigenous youth find and understand their own ancestry is very inspiring.
He has also more recently published Scars & Stars, which I have not read, but will definitely be grabbing a copy. If it's anything like From the Ashes, I won't be able to put it down.
Find this book and read it!