Canadian girl out and aboot

Strangely, I am occasionally recognized in Edmonton. On Saturday night, Mari introduced me to a local newspaper editor, who recognized my name and knew that I had written a few things for his competitor. Another friend of hers said that I looked really familiar.

I also ran into a person a few weeks ago who had read and loved my book. I did not know this person at all, and was shocked and flattered, as I always am when this happens.

A few weeks before this, I was talking to a local author who recently published a book with my publisher.

Her- "You look really familiar. Have we met before?"

Me- Uh, I'm a Frontenac author too. You probably recognize my face from my book and the picture on the website.

(Heh)

*****
I think it's funny when people try to place my ethnicity without actually asking me about it. This happened at a bbq I was at on Saturday night.

Couple- Where are you from?
Me (guessing what they wanted to know)- Saskatoon.

Couple- (pause)- Um, what's your background? You look.... (awkward pause)

Me- (thinking that I should tell them about my education)- I'm French, German, English and my mother is half Chinese. My features come from my mother, but the colouring is all my father's.

I love telling people that I'm from Saskatoon when they ask where I'm from. I did this to one woman, and she told me that she had thought that I was from South America. Yeah, I'm an ass.

Last night I went to see author Joseph Boyden . I loved his first book, which was about First Nations soldiers fighting in the First World War. It was a very daring and poetic book. His second book, which deals with contemporary native issues, has been nominated for a Giller, which is one of the most prestigious awards in Canada. I got to the venue early, because I was worried that it would be packed. My suspicions were correct.

The room quickly filled up. I was checking the ethnic component of the room and noticed that there didn't seem to be any native people. There were a few people of colour, but no natives. Hmmm. I chatted a bit with the people around me. Finally, an attractive woman in her 40s came in with a native woman in her 70s. They were looking for a place to sit, and there was an empty seat beside me. I gave up my seat and sat a little behind a pole, because I felt it was completely rude to let this native grandma sit near the back and away from her companion.

Anyway, Joseph came onstage and did some banter. He was wonderfully funny, humble, engaging, and pretty darn good looking. He read three sections from his new book. He is a great reader, and his work definitely draws on the oral tradition, so it sounds great when read out loud. Afterward, people were allowed to ask him questions about his work. There were some good questions asked. One woman noticed that he was speaking with a native accent, and he blushed a little. He had picked up the accent from his visit to family up north. It definitely comes and goes with him, and he slips into it easily when he is reading from his books. Another man said he was from New Orleans, and Joseph was enthused and wanted to visit with him later.

The elderly native woman in the audience asked him some questions about whether or not he'd kept in touch with some of the elders from his area. She told him that she had a teacher who lived up North who had died at 104. Joseph was quite taken by this woman, and they found out that they'd lived in a similar area. After the reading, he went right to her and talked to her and they were really bonding for several minutes. Her companion thanked me again for giving up my seat, and I told her that I had felt it was the right thing to do. He signed a few books for the two native women and then asked the elder if he could give her a kiss on the cheek as he shook her hand. It was very sweet.

During this, I talked to the other native woman in the audience, who asked me if I was native. We were both surprised by the lack of natives at the event, and counted 3. After this, we all got in line for the long wait to get our books signed.


When it was my turn, I asked Joseph if he missed seeing natives when he was living in New Orleans. He told me that it was very weird, but that he went up north 4 or 5 times a year to be around his native family. Then we talked about mixed race identity stuff and First Nations issues for a few minutes. I had been standing in front of the man from New Orleans, and we had been talking about Katrina, New Orleans, poetry, chess and life while waiting in line. It turned out that the New Orleans man is a slam poet who knows my friend Mike. Small world.

I didn't want to take too much of Joseph's time, so I left quickly and turned him over to New Orleans guy. When I got home, I checked to see what he had written in my book. He wrote, "Alexis, Fantastic to meet you." Joseph Boyden.

I thought that was pretty funny, since I only talked to him for about three minutes. Still, nice man, humble, sweet, and a great reader and writer.

I have been so grateful for better health this week. I've been able to go to all of my fusion and yoga classes and have had renewed energy at work. However, I'm still fighting the remnants of illness, because I've been in bed by 9:30 every night.

I managed to get the winter tires put on my car, and it promptly snowed the next day.

This weekend I am finishing up schoolwork, as I really want to finish my classes. I realized that by December, I'll have completed five courses, which explains why I'm so sick of school right now.

I've watched two interesting movies this week-

First, I watched "Flower Drum Song" which was a 1961 musical created by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It tells the story of a young woman from China, who travels to San Francisco with her father for an arranged marriage. When she arrives in San Fran, she discovers that she's been promised to the wrong man, and so her father and various other matchmakers try to arrange a marriage for her. One of the star characters of this movie is Linda Low, who is played by the very cute Nancy Kwan. She's a bit of a bad girl, smoking cigarettes and dancing burlesque at a night club. SHe sings the song "I enjoy being a girl", which was recently popularized by Sarah Jessica Parker in some GAP commercial. There are a lot of interesting things happening in this movie. There's a lot of stereotyping and sexism, but the film also deals with generational tension, old world and new world tension and ideas about "good" and "bad." It's an all Asian cast and includes Japanese actors playing Chinese roles. I learned about the film from a number of friends who went to see "Hollywood Chinese", which documented the history of Asians on the silver screen.

I also watched "Ong-Bak", which is a martial arts movie starring Tony Ja. Basically, the good dudes want to fight the bad dudes and get a Buddha head back. It's very violent, but if you like martial arts, this is a good movie to watch.

I'm starting to get a little more excited about my trip. This week I had to fill out lots of paperwork for insurance purposes and did a little research about the Philippines. The areas that we will be visiting are not the main touristy areas, which makes me happy. I may have an opportunity to see some rice terraces, which I think would be fascinating. The Philippines has numerous cultural influences- they were colonized by the Spanish, then invaded by Japanese and Americans. There is a large Chinese population, and Tagalog bears some similarities to the Indonesian language. I'm really curious to see how I'll get by linguistically as I know some basic Spanish.

1. I'm doing a story about reflexology for work and am thinking about my own interest in healing. Due to my history of depression, and my interest in pain, healing and medicine, I definitely have an interest in learning more about complimentary therapies. I want to continue my knowledge of reiki, and become a stronger healer. I want to learn more about illness, the body and diseases.


2. In the past week, I've started doing research for the next piece of fiction I want to work on. My book choices and research in the next few months will reveal a bit of what I'm planning to do. It involves the 60s scoop, which is a period of Canadian history in which many First Nations people were placed in foster care, and then adopted out to families. As you can imagine, my own family may have been part of this phenomenon, as we have a First Nations adoptee. Reading about this is painful for me. Last week I read parts of a book called "Our son, a stranger" which was about First nations adoptions gone wrong. Many of the adoptions fell apart and the aboriginal child ended up living on the streets, or had strong behavioural problems.

I found this book hard to read and couldn't fall asleep after I was finished reading it, because I felt so disturbed by it.

This week I also watched "Unnatural and unaccidental", which was set in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It's based on a true story about aboriginal women who were murdered by a hairdresser who piled them with alcohol and then killed them.

Right now I'm immersing myself in reading books written by First Nations people, and about the First Nations situation in Canada. Starting to research and think about this book is like looking at a deep puddle of water, and wondering if I can swim in it without drowning.

Apparently the most populous nation only has about 100 surnames, making for some intense confusion.

The proposed solution

[Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] just posted this, but I saw it and fell in love. It's a gallery of images of families all over the world, with their groceries for a week.

See it here

On Monday, I drove out to Cleardale for a feature that I'd been planning to do for a few weeks. A while ago, I'd become intrigued with Mennonite families in the area. I learned that many of the Mennonite schools here only go up to Grade 9, leaving the children with only a Grade 9 education. So I called the schools and made some arrangements to go out to one of the schools to interview some of the kids. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the school I'd chosen was 2.5 hours away from GP, so the trek out was a bit of a drive.

To make matters worse, I ended up driving through some snow flurries, which made the drive even more treacherous.

However, I'm really glad that I decided to do this story. The teacher who arranged the interviews was fantastic and I ended up talking to a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. The boy came from a family of 17, and the girl from a family of 7. Both of them were smart and articulate, and wanted to pursue further education. In some cases, Mennonite kids get married when they are 16, but neither of these kids are pursuing that option.

Racialicious posted about this fascinating slideshow from Slate.com which depicts the history of racism in advertising.

In other links news, I'm working on a story about the social acceptability of alcohol and its costs to society. A few days ago I heard about Robby Bubble , which is a non-alcoholic champagne marketed to children. It's sold in some Alberta liquor stores. I personally find the product quite scary and it's drawn some opposition from MADD, who say the product encourages kids to drink. The advertising features a kid riding a cork, and the slogan is "Celebrate like the grown-ups!"

(Shudder)

You can read the story I did on intercultural adoptions here

I haven't been around much because I've been working on an article about intercultural adoption. There are about 20 families in GP who have adopted children of African or African-American descent. I interviewed two of the families this week, and it was such a powerful experience. One family saw their little boy's picture in an email and knew instantly he was their son. They had to go through a long process to adopt him from Liberia and when he arrived, he was incredibly ill. I went out to visit them on Tuesday, and got a chance to see Brendan interact with his four siblings (all biological children), and his mom.

Last night I drove out to visit another family who had adopted 2 children from New Orleans. One child was adopted when she was 8 days old and the other lived in a shelter during Hurricane Katrina until the family adopted him when he was 14 months. I spent almost 3 hours last night hanging out with the family and playing with the kids. The little girl really took a shine to me, and snuggled up to me on the couch. Both kids were quite hilarious and I kept on cracking up because of them.

The kids had been told that I was coming to see them, so they were waiting in the window when I arrived and started waving at me as I came up the driveway.

We brought the kids and their mom into the office today to do a photoshoot, which was a blast. The women who work in the subscription department couldn't stop grinning at the kids because they are so damn cute.

Doing this story has been such an amazing experience. The whole initiative was my own, and it's been such a rewarding process. I'm so thankful to the families who have shared their stories with me.