Bone grinding on wire: that is my morning cup of coffee, that is what wakes me up every day, and that is what reminds me that the fall from my brother's apartment window was real – and that I'm lucky to be alive. The pain also keeps me sober. It reminds me what it was like years ago when addiction and homelessness almost did me in. For that, and those harsh reminders, I am thankful.
When it comes to memoir, redemption stories tend to make me feel good; and especially stories about people heroically overcoming challenging childhoods. From the Ashes looks like this kind of a feel good story – Jesse Thistle and his brothers were abandoned by their parents, raised by strict and unaffectionate grandparents, with Jesse going on to twenty years of drug addictions and homelessness before hitting bottom, getting an education, and becoming a professor himself – but this read left me a bit nonplussed. The storytelling is episodic – with many short chapters telling of incidents from Jesse's life without introspection or much linkage between them; this happened, then this – and I didn't find that satisfying until an endnote in which the author explains that this is how his memories (from deep youth and his drug-addled years) appear to him, “like fragments of light, flickers of a flame, shadows on a wall.” That seems an authentic explanation, but doesn't make the reading any more satisfying. And as pitiable as Jesse's street years were, I couldn't help but continually note how every negative consequence was the result of his own choices: Jesse's brothers, with the exact same upbringing, went on to become contributing members of society, while Jesse himself was lying and stealing and hurting himself and others for decades (when I read how Jesse taught others how easy it is to scam Social Services, over and over again, for a thousand dollars at a time in apartment “startup” money that they could then use to buy crack, I couldn't help but feel resentful: I acknowledge that homelessness is a serious issue in desperate need of resources and shudder to think of all that money up in smoke). Even those events that led to Jesse's reintegration into society – his battle to educate himself, the love and support of a stable life partner, and his rediscovery of his Indigenous identity – don't feel like they were given adequate attention: this happened, then this happened, and it's hard for the reader to see how one thing follows the other. Still, there is plenty of value in this read: So many of us recoil when we encounter the dirty and wild-eyed on the street and it's always valuable to be reminded that within that broken shell remains a human being; someone who just might eventually rise from the ashes if the right opportunities and motivations align.
Grandpa's anger that day wasn't usual – it was the same rage I saw when he warned me about doing drugs after he told me about Dad's disappearance – and it scared me so much that I bawled in my room as Josh received the beating of his life. I lay on my bed and covered my ears with my pillow to hide from the sound of the rod thrashing through the air. In my head, I begged for Josh to cry out, but he kept it together somehow. I knew it was to show he was a man the way Grandpa liked, but that only made things worse. After what sounded like thirty more blows, Josh finally bellowed out in agony. It was a sound so sad it penetrated right to where I was hiding, right through the concrete foundation of our house.Jesse Thistle's first memories are of going berry picking with his kookum; his maternal grandmother (an “allotment Métis” who, with her husband, lived in a shack on undesirable public road allotment land) who sometimes watched her grandsons while her daughter went off with the boys' abusive father. Jesse's parents eventually split up, with his mother taking the boys and trying to make a home for them in Moose Jaw, but when their father later showed up and asked for the boys, the exhausted mother handed them over. He took them back to Ontario, but as a drug addict, he rarely had food for the boys, teaching them (3-, 4-, and 5-years-old) how to beg for change and steal food from the corner store and hide from anybody who came to the apartment door when he was away for days at a time. Eventually picked up by Social Services, the boys were put into the care of their paternal grandparents (this Grandma was part Algonquin, but Indigeneity doesn't seem to have been a part of her culture); and while they did provide their grandsons with food and shelter and discipline throughout their childhoods, this grandfather (who had himself been raised by a strict and abusive grandfather) had firm expectations and a quick temper. In reaction, all three Thistle brothers became brawlers in the neighbourhood and at school, but it would seem that only Jesse would be set on a path of habitual lying, thievery, and bullying. Even as his brothers were turning their lives around as teenagers, Jesse didn't apply himself in school and began partying and taking drugs; the absolute zero-tolerance rule that their grandfather laid down after the heartbreak of the boys' father's disappearance. When Jesse was found with drugs in their home at eighteen, his grandparents kicked him out and completely cut him off; over his next twenty years of homelessness and drug abuse, trips in and out of prison and rehab, Jesse received no support, visits, or contact with his grandparents (and very little contact with his mother throughout the years). And yes, the path Jesse travelled was a hard one, and I have no idea if he inherited more of his Dad's off-the-rails genes than his brothers did, but throughout, he chose this path and suffered that choice.
There was a silence that came over my spirit, followed by what sounded like a gust of wind. The noise of the rave receded into the background, and I heard something emerge from my own core. My eyes pressed shut, I focused inward on that sound. There was a distant drum – louder, louder, louder still, until it vibrated every molecule in my being. The beautiful cry of Indian drummers rang aloud in every direction – from the north, south, east, west, up, down, over, under, beneath, within, and without. I opened my eyes and saw I was dancing alone on the flatness of the great plains. I was dressed in a plume of feathers, deerskins, a bustle, beads, moccasins, a rattle, and tassels. My legs rushed in perfect coordination over top of the grass, pressing and tamping it down, as vast fields undulated before me. The sun hung low as red clouds of dust were kicked up by my feet, filling the air. I danced and danced, moving this way and that, until my thirst for water and the rave seemed but distant memories of a life I once lived.I did find it very interesting that, more than once, Jesse would have these out-of-body Indigenous experiences; and not always while tripping on ecstasy. He once had a vivid nightmare about fighting redcoats on the prairies and was astonished to learn (many years later) that the details meshed with the Battle of Batoche, and that he was related to the famed Métis rebel Louis Riel and other noted resistance fighters. From the Ashes doesn't make an explicit link between Jesse's rediscovery of his Indigenous heritage and his blossoming into a man who feels his own worth after years of hurting himself (not in the way that Richard Wagamese does in One Native Life or Wab Kinew in The Reason You Walk), but it does note that it was while beginning to study Indigenous issues at university that Jesse was put on a path to becoming today's foremost expert on Métis history and Indigenous homelessness; he is the recipient of many academic awards and fellowships – after teaching himself to read while in jail. That is a feel good story, and I wish I could pinpoint what it is in the writing that left me underwhelmed. I am still thankful that Jesse Thistle shared his life story; this is the kind of honesty and insight that makes you hope that someday his lost brethren from the streets might also be redeemed. Four stars is a rounding up.
