Writing and Difference
Joseph Boyden's literary debut, a short-story compilation titled Born with a Tooth (2001), attracted attention immediately. Write-ups on the book drew parallels with Tomsom Highway's work with such a mentor, no question but that his next work was eagerly awaited. Three Day Road (Le chemin des âmes in French), published in 2005 by Penguin, was an immediate success, winning high praise from all critics. Very freely based on the life of Francis Pegahmagabow, a crack Ojibway sniper and First World War hero, the novel takes on an almost hallucinatory quality as its narrator Xavier, a young Cree man just home from the war, looks back on the path that took him with his cousin to the trenches of Flanders. Haunted by the war, a giant soul-consuming windigo, Xavier is caught between his ghosts and the living world, while Niska, his elderly aunt, paddles him upriver back to the village.
With the participation of Joseph Boyden himself and Huron actor Charles Bender, a reading passing between the original English text and the French version (a fine translation by Michel Lederer, who has also translated James Welsh and Sherman Alexie), at the Grande Bibliothèque, room M-450, Wednesday June 7 at five, in a literary event not to be missed.
Joseph Boyden has Ojibway ancestry; he divides his time between northern Ontario, where he was born, and Louisiana, where he teaches.
This activity was made possible by the generous support of éditions Albin-Michel on the occasion of the publication of the French version, Le Chemin des âmes.
Book launch for Les Algonquins de Trois-Rivières, l'oral au secours de l'écrit, by Claude Hubert and Rémi Savard, with a foreword by Denis Delâge, published under the auspices of Recherches amérindiennes au Québec. The event will happen at the Grande Bibliothèque, room M-450, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in conjunction with les éditions Gallimard.
Are people born shamans, or do they become them? Tales about memories from the womb, the transmission of souls or how the sex of children to be born is determined give us an understanding of an essential aspect of Inuit cosmic vision. Faithful to the outlook of Claude Lévi-Strauss, in whose laboratory he worked for seven years, in Être et renaître Inuit, homme, femme ou chamane Bernard Saladin d'Anglure introduces us to the universal symbols and properties found in Inuit oral tradition.
A book launch for Être et renaître Inuit, homme, femme ou chamane will be held during at the Grande Bibliothèque, room M-450, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in conjunction with les éditions Gallimard.
