Waiting for the Long Night Moon
Stories
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
National Bestseller
An intimate and personal debut collection of short fiction from the bestselling author of The Berry Pickers.
The stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon explore the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water. Amanda Peters portrays the dignity of traditional Indigenous life, the humiliations of systemic racism, and the resilient power to endure by melding traditional storytelling with her signature style of evocative, spare prose.
A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “Pejipug (Winter Arrives)" as well the Indigenous Voices Award-winning title story.
At times sad, sometimes disturbing, but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canadian writer Peters (The Berry Pickers) delivers a skillful set of tales featuring Indigenous characters in contemporary and historical settings. The narrator of "(Winter Arrives)" describes the seasonal return of white colonists to her riverside land. Though her father assures her that the colonists' stay will be short ("Each year they come, little one. They come and they leave"), the narrator has her doubts. "Tiny Birds and Terrorists" centers on an encampment of activists, who are called "terrorists" on the evening news for attempting to protect their natural resources. One of them, a 16-year-old girl who skips school to join the group, is later cautioned by her mother against becoming a "rez bum." Peters draws on oral history with "The Story of the Crow (A Retelling)," which details how the crow became black and hoarse. "In the Name of God" chronicles a boy's harrowing experience at a Catholic residential school, where a priest locks him in a cupboard for four days as punishment for insubordination. Peters casts an unflinching eye on the suffering of her characters, resulting in the heightened emotions of stories like "Three Billion Heartbeats," in which a young woman leaves home for the city to score drugs and faces mortal danger. It's an affecting and wide-ranging collection.
