We Survived the Night
An Indigenous Reckoning
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- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A SERVICE95 BOOKCLUB HYPE READ FOR OCTOBER + HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF AUTUMN 2025
'Extraordinary' ROXANE GAY
'A powerful, beautiful, wrenching masterpiece ... both a memoir and something that reaches far beyond the personal'' REBECCA SOLNIT
'The book I've been waiting my whole life to read' TOMMY ORANGE
'A fascinating multifaceted restoration of Indigenous history' NPR
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"In my people's language, we greet each other each morning by saying "Tsecwínucw-k: 'You survived the night"'
One dark night, a new-born is discovered dumped inside a waste incinerator. The boy, rescued from death, grows into a man who will in turn abandon his own children, including his first-born son Julian Brave NoiseCat.
Behind this father-son story lies an even darker history of abuse, colonialism and vicious attempts to erase North America's First Peoples from their land. Told in the style of a 'Coyote Story', a legend of the trickster forefather of NoiseCat's people, We Survived the Night brings a vanishing artform back to life in this dazzling account of contemporary Indigenous North America. Braiding on-the-ground reportage together with intimate experience, history with mythology, NoiseCat grapples with trauma that cascades across generations to uncover truths about himself, his family and his people - how they survived and how, through vital political, environmental and cultural movements, they are coming back.
An inventive, illuminating and moving narrative from one of the most compelling artists at work today, We Survived the Night is both reconciliation and celebration of Indigenous pain, hope and resurgence - and their power to shape a collective future.
Here is an unforgettable journey of restoration through father-son ties and historic reckoning of Indigenous people, announcing a major new literary talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and documentarian NoiseCat's ambitious debut ruminates on generational trauma and resilience among Indigenous communities in North America. The book opens with a night watchman's horrific discovery at St. Joseph's Mission, an Indian residential school in British Columbia: a Salish newborn, NoiseCat's father, abandoned in the garbage, "the only known survivor of the school's incinerator." With this harrowing legacy at the heart of his narrative, NoiseCat traces his family's history, including his father's achievements as an artist and struggles with alcoholism, and reflects on Coyote Stories, the oral tradition centered on the famed trickster. This inventive combination generates moving parallels between myth and reality, particularly regarding the complicated relationships between fathers and sons—not only NoiseCat and his father, but also his grandfather Zeke, who fathered at least 19 children ("almost single-handedly bringing our people back from a genocide," NoiseCat quips). However, the account loses some steam as NoiseCat switches in and out of straightforward reportage on issues like Deb Haaland's historic appointment as first Native American secretary of the interior. While these sections are illuminating, they can feel lifted from another project. Still, NoiseCat's attempt to cover as much territory as possible so that "these places, stories, and ancestors come full circle to carry us back to where we belong" results in a powerful archive of Indigenous pain and persistence.
