Title: The Education of Augie Merasty
By: Joseph Auguste Merasty and David Carpenter
Genre: Biography
Pages: 105
Release Date: February 8th, 2015
Publisher: Regina Press
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Summary from Goodreads:
This memoir offers a courageous and intimate chronicle of life in a residential school.
Now a retired fisherman and trapper, the author was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their families and sent to government- funded, church-run schools, where they were subjected to a policy of “aggressive assimilation.”
As Augie Merasty recounts, these schools did more than attempt to mold children in the ways of white society. They were taught to be ashamed of their native heritage and, as he experienced, often suffered physical and sexual abuse.
But, even as he looks back on this painful part of his childhood, Merasty’s sense of humour and warm voice shine through.
Review:
When I picked up this book, I was ready to read about the residential schools from someone who lived through it. I wanted history and I needed to understand. This book had so little of Augie and way too much of the ghost writer who wrote the story.
Most the book was from Carpenters point of view and outlined how much time he took tracking down Augie, attempting to extract some kind of story out of him. What little story that he did tell, was sharply told with little color to it. It was almost bland, if content like this could be considered bland.
I'm disappointed in this book and still on the hunt for the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment