He’d always talk about being a Stranger like it was a good thing, like it was the opposite of what the world seemed to think it was. “Never forget who you are, Margogo, and who you come from. We are warriors, us. We are Métis. We have fought and won our freedom. We’ve never lived by their rules. Aren’t meant to. We have to be free.”
The Strangers tells the story of four generations of a Métis family (the “Strangers” of the title), as told in rotating POVs by four women of the family (a grandmother, her daughter, and two teenaged sisters from the third generation). It wasn’t until after I finished this that I realised that one of these teenagers was a central character in Katherena Vermette’s last novel (The Break) — and while it isn’t necessary to have read one before the other, I had some questions cleared up once I made that connection. Once again, Vermette has created a roster of incredibly real characters whose stories touched my heart (I was in tears, more than once, over moments of simple human connection), and once again, she has taught me what it is like to live as a member of the urban Métis community of Winnipeg — the pressures, stresses, and prejudices unique to this particular racialised group — without me, as a citizen of the dominant, settler culture of Canada, feeling blamed or vilified. The Strangers touched me emotionally, taught me intellectually, and was a satisfying literary journey; this is everything I love in a book. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Back then, we were always so happy to see each other. It was like Christmas every time. Mama was in treatment and normal, and Phoenix was in a group home in West St. Paul. I remember missing and loving them both so much. Phoenix missed me too. She’d always give me a hug so big and so long I thought she’d never let me go. She’d hug me before she hugged anyone else. Even Sparrow who was so small she’d cling to my side for the first bit, unsure about Phoenix and Mama, as if they were strangers.
There is a satisfying irony to this book’s title: Not only is this a family of “Strangers” (apparently a very common Métis name), but with some kids going into foster care, others being raised without getting to know all of their extended family, people keeping secrets from one another, or otherwise disappearing or becoming unknowable, this is a story of how members of the same family can become strangers to one another. It’s also a story about cultural identity: how strangers judge people by the shade gradients of their skin, how ancestral knowledge can be encoded in “bone memory” even if it had never been outwardly passed down, and between “Pretendians”, the proud Indigenous storytellers and ceremony-keepers who keep their culture alive, and those blonde-haired blue-eyed Métis who try to “pass” as white, how much of identity is self-created:
To think she was almost free of it. She had almost overcome the sad Indian stereotype. She’d almost became an example. She used to try and tell herself she was only Métis, not a real Indian, as if that could spare her from it. Even though it never spared her family. It never made any difference at all to anyone on the outside looking in. She tried to hide it, kill it in her, be as white as possible, pass, but it didn’t much matter what she did. To the world she was still a squaw. Trying to reason that she was only half a squaw didn’t matter much to anyone else, not even her. And here she was now. Alone in a big empty house. Her family useless — every last one of them. Nothing to look back on but a bunch of shameful stories. No successes to speak of. Nothing to show for a life of hard work. Until now.
With the stories of these three generations of women unspooling over the length of the novel — and with some threads filling in information on the previous and ensuing generation — the reader watches as family traits get passed down; as well as similar triumphs, familiar fights, mistakes, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities for connection. Although there’s no real explanation for why the men throughout the generations all seem to have become punks and criminals (their behaviour is not overtly linked to systemic prejudice, addictions, or lack of opportunity), it was amazing to watch as Phoenix becomes more self-aware over her years in the system (with medication to mellow her mood and Indigenous teachings giving her something to connect with, she’s not quite the “monster” that people say she is). As the storyline progresses, Vermette does a masterful job of letting the readers in on who these characters are; puzzle pieces click into place to show a betrayal here, an unacknowledged meanness there, and we can see the moment where lives were nudged off the rails. I cried for them because Vermette made me care for them and I am enlarged for having got to know the Strangers. A book to watch come literary awards season.
