'These characters are more than their trauma': Michelle Good & Christian Allaire discuss Five Little Indians
Christian Allaire will defend Five Little Indians by Michelle Good on Canada Reads 2022
Michelle Good's novel Five Little Indians will be championed by Ojibway fashion journalist Christian Allaire on Canada Reads 2022.
Five Little Indians tells the story of five young friends trying to start adult lives in Vancouver, after being released from residential school without resources. The novel follows the intersecting lives of Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie, as they fend for themselves in the city, still haunted by the traumatic memories of their past.
Five Little Indians won the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. It was also on the 2020 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize shortlist and the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.
Allaire, who has written for Vogue, Mr. Porter, Hazlitt and more, said he wanted "to champion a contemporary Indigenous voice" on Canada Reads. He interviewed Good about her novel before the debates, which take place March 28-31st. Watch their conversation above, or read a transcript below.
Canada Reads 2022 will be hosted by Ali Hassan and broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Allaire: Aaniin Boozhoo, hello, Michelle.
Good: Hello, Christian. So nice to see your smiling face.
Allaire: You too. How are you doing?
Good: Good. Really good.
Allaire: So I mean, we spoke a bit about this, but I did want to tell you again why I chose this book to be on Canada Reads. As you know, my grandmother attended residential school, so this has a very close connection to the experiences my family has gone through. And I wanted to hear from you, what sort of compelled you to tell this story?
Good: Well, you know, it ultimately came from a sense of deep annoyance at this ubiquitous question that survivors are constantly confronted with, which is: "Why can't they just get over it?" So I wanted to answer that question. I wanted to articulate it in a fictional way, so it would be more comfortable for readers than heavy slogging through legal documents or nonfiction works and so on.
I wanted to tell the story of the survivor and demonstrate the tremendous psychological burden that they carried with them when they left the schools and how that continued to impact their lives and the lives of their families as well.
I wanted to tell the story of the survivor and demonstrate the tremendous psychological burden that they carried with them when they left the schools and how that continued to impact their lives.- Michelle Good
Allaire: And was that difficult? Because I know you had to spend a lot of time looking into what actually being in these schools was like. Was that difficult to write?
Good: I already knew what that was like, what it was about, when I sat down to write the book. But there were times when I wrote certain passages in the book where I just have to walk away for a while because it is traumatic. And you know, people do suffer secondary trauma from immersing themselves in this kind of traumatic scenario. I certainly felt it, and it was also very personal, given that some of the themes, some of the anecdotes in the book, are lifted from real life, from my mother's life.
Allaire: I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you said it took nine years to write?
Good: Yes, nine long years. And that nine years, it covers from the day I wrote the first paragraph till the day the book was actually released. I was also running my own law firm at the time that I was writing the book, living life, and we all know how life can get in the way.
Allaire: Yes!
Good: But I also very consciously took my time to write this to be very careful. These are subjects that one doesn't approach lightly, one doesn't approach quickly, and you need to be certain that you're getting it right, when you're telling the story about such deep trauma.
Allaire: Do you think the book benefited from taking that time? I think in a way not rushing it probably made it a much better book, right?
Good: Well, I think so. I think that it did benefit because there would be times for whatever reason that I would have months from the last word I wrote until I went back to it. And I would read through it and I would be seeing it with fresh eyes, and I would think, "Oh, no, I'm going to change that a little bit. I better work with this a little bit." So I think it did benefit. I'm not sure that I would want another book to take nine years.
Allaire: Right, that's a long time.
Good: Well, yeah, especially when you're my age. But I think it did benefit and I think it was required. It was just the framework that I was given to write it in.
Allaire: One of my favourite parts of the book is that you don't spend too long on what actually happens inside the schools. I think we all know the horrific things that have happened. You focus more on the aftermath and the years later, and how that trauma lingers. Was that a deliberate approach you took?
Good: That was the whole point. The whole point was not to talk so much about the residential school experience itself, but to talk about the impacts of the residential school experience and how that doesn't only affect the individual. We experience the residential school legacy collectively, not just individually, but collectively as a people.
We experience the residential school legacy collectively, not just individually, but collectively as a people.- Michelle Good
There's lots of work that survivors themselves have done telling their stories about what happened to them. And there's lots of testimonies of survivors through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. I felt that, you know, it's well-established, it's sufficiently established, the kinds of suffering that these children went through. But what's not sufficiently established, and what I believe is standing in the way of meaningful reconciliation, is understanding the impact and how profound it is.
Allaire: Yeah. And I love how you also show how there's not one story. Your five characters all react very differently in the aftermath, and I think people maybe have this idea that all survivors are the same and went through the same experience. And that's just not the case.
Good: Well, and you know, that's really interesting because the first paragraph that I wrote was about Kenny — one of our characters, one of our little Indians — and immediately upon writing that paragraph, I knew at that point that I needed more main characters, not secondary characters, but more main characters, because one person could not possibly carry the burden of all of the potential experiences that they could have. And, experiences for young girls was quite different than experiences for boys. So I needed to have both boys and girls, young men, young women represented. I needed to have the various responses to trauma articulated and not one whole person is going to have all of those kinds of responses. Everybody responds to trauma differently because, of course, we're all different. So I really, really wanted to have a broader spectrum of that whole experience, as articulated with the five.
Allaire: I think something that's really poignant is how the five sort of form their own little community in East Vancouver. Can you tell me a bit about the significance of that location and your tie to it?
Good: Well, first of all, I'm going to just say something a little bit about community. This was a very revolutionary time in the late 1960s, the early 1970s, as it pertains to Indigenous people. You imagine that thousands upon thousands of kids that were in these residential schools, they were being released. They were not able to find comfort or belonging in their own communities and they were just all in droves showing up in urban settings in the cities. And so, this whole urban Indigenous community began developing right across the country.
It was just such a magical time because these were the people that were, in many ways, driving the kind of activism that's talked about in the book, in terms of things like the American Indian Movement, in terms of the out loud struggle for recognition of Indigenous rights and so on.
So through the residential school experience, there was the creation of this opportunity for this larger urban community, and that's what was going on. I was just aging out of foster care myself, right around the time in the novel that these kids are aging out of the residential school. I was in Vancouver and experienced many of the kinds of things that they had in terms of dealing with racism, trying to find work. You walk out of your foster care arrangement, you got a nickel in your pocket. That's it. That's all.
And that was something that I really, really wanted to articulate — the absolute abandonment of these children, that there was nothing for them. There was no therapeutic intervention. There was no job training and there was no education of any kind. There was no support of any kind. And then, to also perceive yourself or to perceive one of these characters as deeply traumatized and then thrust in a make-it-or-break-it, live-or-die situation. I really wanted that to be clear, that they were just cut loose.
Allaire: Right. And it's an unfortunate thing, but I also think it is beautiful in a sense of community that Native people show up for each other.
Our communities are collective communities going way back to the beginning of who we were on Turtle Island. Nobody is going to get our experience the way we get our experience.- Michelle Good
Good: And they do. That's the thing. As I said earlier, we experienced this collectively, and that's because we are collective in nature, our communities are collective communities going way back to the beginning of who we were on Turtle Island.
Nobody is going to get our experience the way we get our experience. And, you know, nobody could provide the understanding or the support, except somebody who had also been through it. Very deep sense of community. Yeah.
Allaire: I think it's a beautiful thing. And, you said a very beautiful thing yesterday of turning horror into power.
Good: I think about the residential schools as an implement in the colonial toolkit. You think about those other kinds of implements that were used against us — the creation of reserves, the inability to hire legal counsel, all of the older, onerous law and policy that was imposed on us. And still, here we are.
Allaire: And still, here we are. A few more questions. I wanted to kind of talk about the theme, One Book that Connects Us. I think this book does that in many ways. As we just talked about it, it talks about Indigenous people forming their own community in light of this trauma.
But I also think anyone can pick up this book and connect with these characters. How do you think this book fits into that theme?
Good: I think that there's a really broad connection to the theme in a very meaningful way. One of my objectives in writing the book is that there's all this talk about reconciliation. Right. Let's reconcile. Let's connect Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities so that we can reconcile in some meaningful way.
But unless there is truth, there can be no reconciliation. And that is what I sought to do — articulate the truth of survivors. And then perhaps it will give non-Indigenous Canadians the opportunity to reconsider what they think they know about the impact of residential school and that hopefully will inspire them to be more compassionate, more informed, to take responsibility for their own education and to connect with the Indigenous community in a really substantive and meaningful way so that reconciliation is more than an apology and a "see you later."
Unless there is truth, there can be no reconciliation. And that is what I sought to do – articulate the truth of survivors.- Michelle Good
Allaire: Well, that's my biggest thing is in schools, maybe they teach about residential schools and they make it seem like it was something that happened decades and decades ago.
We're still feeling these effects, and what these books don't teach is the aftermath and what people are living through at this moment. So I think that's bang on.
Good: I think that there is political and historical denial about what went on. The information was intentionally withheld because the powers-that-be don't want their voter base to be mortified at the treatment of small children.
Allaire: I want to go to the ending because these are not easy topics. And, I will say at moments, this book is not an easy read, and I don't think it should be an easy read. But the ending I actually found to be very hopeful, and it actually ends on a very hopeful note for Indigenous people and the way forward.
Why was it important to sort of end on that note for you?
Good: I tried to have, throughout the book, that these characters are more than their trauma. They're fully formed human beings with feelings of joy and desire and love and fear and all of the things that makes a human, a human.
I think the most powerful thing in the universe is love. But the second most powerful thing is hope. For a person to be able to look at their world and still, regardless of these hideous traumas, be able to look at their world with an ounce of hope, it will lift them, it will buoy them, it will carry them forward.
And so that message of hope is something that I wanted to end on, that note of hope.
Allaire: I think we could all use hope right now. Two more questions. I want to know what has been the greatest piece of feedback you've gotten since launching the book? What's the response been like for you?
Good: The response has been really, really phenomenal. I mean, there's been lots of prizes, lots of nominations, and those are wonderful because, personally, someone's recognizing your work. But in the broader sense, it elevates the book so more people are reading it. There's more hearts, there's more minds, and that's how I feel about Canada Reads too. It's like, "Yes, more hearts and more minds."
On the other hand — or in addition — it has given me a platform, and I have been doing many kinds of educational presentations about the residential schools, their impacts, about reconciliation, about colonial policy, about how we move forward in a way that is not just lip service. And that has been a beautiful opportunity for me.
Allaire: My last question maybe a selfish one, but I'm wondering, what do you think is your biggest piece of advice for me when I go on the show?
Good: I'm so pleased that you are my champion and one of the reasons for that is that I believe that you feel the truth in this book. And so, my one piece of advice to you would be, stick with the truth. Allow the power of the truth to guide the way that you proceed. And we will prevail.
Allaire: Well, it is my honour to do so, and I just want to say thank you for writing this book.
Good: Well, thank you for being my champion. It's so great.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Canada Reads 2022 contenders
- Christian Allaire champions Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
- Malia Baker champions Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
- Tareq Hadhad champions What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
- Suzanne Simard champions Life In the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller
- Mark Tewksbury champions Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
