book review: in search of april raintree

in search of april raintree by beatrice mosionier is freaking intense. it's like the colour purple or i know why the caged bird sings in that it's the based-on-a-true-story account of a little girl becoming a woman through the most incredibly brutal circumstances. i actually prefer it, since it's more relevant to my culture. i've never experienced firsthand racism towards black people, but i have witnessed some of the scenes described in this book.

april raintree is the daughter of a couple of alcoholics and the older sister of cheryl raintree. they are a metis (part native) family living on the canadian prairies. the story is april's account of the girls' removal from their parents' home and placement in various foster homes. april fights valiantly to survive, rise above her miserable circumstances, and protect her sister. it's terrifyingly honest, showing the girls not as brave little survivors or victims, but as human beings who make bad choices and suffer the consequences, and are seriously messed up from all the evil that is done to them. the protagonists are complex and real. they aren't innocent by any means, and i, as a reader, didn't like them at certain points in their development, but it was a damned good book.

my culture is profoundly racist towards native and metis people, but after years of seeing it i had become desensitized to it. this book reopened my sense of outrage that people could treat other people so very badly. after crying my way through segments of the book i wanted to go kick the shit out of some white people.

as a white person i want to apologize with every fibre of my being for all the disgusting, horrific, insidious wrongs people of my skin tone have perpetrated upon pretty much every other people group on the planet. we suck. please forgive us.