1) The document summarizes Tomson Highway's novel The Kiss of The Fur Queen, focusing on the author, main themes, and contrast between the characters' home community of Eemanapiteepitat, Manitoba and the residential school they were sent to.
2) Key themes discussed include the conflict between Cree culture and imposed Western culture, coping with sexual assault, and the life-sustaining power of art.
3) The residential school is described as a sterile environment where the children's identities were erased through practices like shaving their heads and forcing them to speak English only.
1) The document summarizes Tomson Highway's novel The Kiss of The Fur Queen, focusing on the author, main themes, and contrast between the characters' home community of Eemanapiteepitat, Manitoba and the residential school they were sent to.
2) Key themes discussed include the conflict between Cree culture and imposed Western culture, coping with sexual assault, and the life-sustaining power of art.
3) The residential school is described as a sterile environment where the children's identities were erased through practices like shaving their heads and forcing them to speak English only.
1) The document summarizes Tomson Highway's novel The Kiss of The Fur Queen, focusing on the author, main themes, and contrast between the characters' home community of Eemanapiteepitat, Manitoba and the residential school they were sent to.
2) Key themes discussed include the conflict between Cree culture and imposed Western culture, coping with sexual assault, and the life-sustaining power of art.
3) The residential school is described as a sterile environment where the children's identities were erased through practices like shaving their heads and forcing them to speak English only.
1) The document summarizes Tomson Highway's novel The Kiss of The Fur Queen, focusing on the author, main themes, and contrast between the characters' home community of Eemanapiteepitat, Manitoba and the residential school they were sent to.
2) Key themes discussed include the conflict between Cree culture and imposed Western culture, coping with sexual assault, and the life-sustaining power of art.
3) The residential school is described as a sterile environment where the children's identities were erased through practices like shaving their heads and forcing them to speak English only.
Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as odt, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1/ 1
The Kiss of The Fur Queen
Presentation by Samantha Zurin
Professor Lee Frew
EN4336 Transantlantic Gothic Literature Thursday, October 31st, 2019
About the author:
• Tomson Highway is Cree and was born in 1951. He is most notably a playwright, writer and concert pianist. • He lived in a village in Northern Manitoba where he was taken into a residential school as a young child with his brother Rene to be assimilated into Western and Catholic culture • Both sets of brothers (in the story and in real life) became artists, developing their passions: Thomson and Jeremiah became concert pianists and authors, while Rene and Gabriel became well-known through their dancing and choreography.
Main Themes: • A respect for Cree Culture ( The characters reminisce fondly on their heritage during childhood) • Conflict in self-identity and culture as a result of cultural erasure and assimilation • Coping with sexual assault • Parasitic corruption • Sterile/Artifice vs organic and familiar • Religion and sex • Imagery and descriptive language involving the mouth • The life-sustaining power of art
Contrast between:
Eemanapiteepitat, Manitoba Residential school
• Oopaskooyak is described vividly, first when Abraham is The residential school is a sterile environment mushing and then in later accounts • The boys’ hair is shorn - they are left naked and vulnerable • Gabriel’s descriptions of his home are always colourful and pleasant: • This sterilization and “de-savageing” reverberates in their “He yearned to reach right through the window, scoop up the own communities where the parents are also uprooted from toy village in the cup of his hand, kiss in tenderly, and put it their homes in the pocket next to his heart, He could already taste the Cree on his tongue (Highway 55).” • Children are forced to speak english or else face lashings • (and further assault from father Lafleur). Assimilated into • They live in strong, wooden cabins, – colonizers force the Euro/North-American society Cree people to live in sterile, cheap homes made of plywood and linoleum • Children are converted to Catholicism and must dismiss their • Adults in the community have already been forced to adopt heritage the Christian faith. This causes conflict later in the text between the brothers and their parents • The vices of Western society (such as alcohol) take hold of Manitoba
Discussion Questions:
1. Discuss how Gabriel's experience and fate are symbolic of the cultural disintegration caused by colonization.
2. Focus on some of the images in the text associated with Western religion and culture and how they are used in the eradication of culture or human experience. What are some of the reasons these images might be used, and what makes some of them ironic?
3. How does the Fur Queen manifest differently for the two brothers and why?
Buy ebook Landscaping Postcoloniality the Dissemination of Cameroon Anglophone Literature The Dissemination of Cameroon Anglophone Literature 1st Edition B. Ashuntantang cheap price
