Status
Available
Call number
Call number
305.897 M37 1990
Collection
Local notes
Shelved in Aboriginal Collection
Description
Lee Maracle's Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel tells the narrative of an Indigenous woman raised in North America who finds her strength despite the forces that challenge and oppress her. Grippingly honest, Lee's autobiographical exploration of post-colonial tensions in Toronto circa 1960-1980 sheds light on the existing racist and sexist sentiments affecting Indigenous women. Reflective of the struggles Indigenous communities face today, this book continues to hold a place within contemporary Indigenous and women's studies classrooms.New and updated, this edition features a preface by Lee Maracle.
Publication
Toronto : Women's Press, [1990]
Original publication date
1975
User reviews
LibraryThing member Lindsay_W
Bobbie Lee Indian Rebel is a memoir of Lee Maracle’s first twenty years in Vancouver and Toronto. Twenty years filled with racism, poverty, violence, drug and alcohol misuse, and family dysfunction. “Colonialism stole everything”. Maracle courageously shares the darkest and most difficult
Right from the start though, Maracle had a hunger for meaning and this is likely what kept her going through her darkest times in Toronto and back home in BC. Maracle details her interest in Marxism and leftist politics and outlines her involvement in the Indigenous resistance movement Native Alliance for Red Power (NARP) modeled after the Black Panther Party. In a 1990 update at the end of the book (the original story was recorded in 1975) Maracle brings us forward another 15 years in her life including the birth of her children.
I have very vivid memories of driving through the squalid conditions on the Tsleil-Waututh reserve in North Vancouver during the 60s and 70s. I now have a picture of what life was like for families like Maracle’s, living in those houses. It is a testament to Maracle’s strength and resilience that she could survive those years and go on to be a powerful voice for Indigenous people.
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times of her early years. It is easy to understand her shutting down emotionally and her acknowledged lack of self worth amidst the trauma of living in a racist society. “The umbilical cord of terror we inherited from our imprisoned parents.”Right from the start though, Maracle had a hunger for meaning and this is likely what kept her going through her darkest times in Toronto and back home in BC. Maracle details her interest in Marxism and leftist politics and outlines her involvement in the Indigenous resistance movement Native Alliance for Red Power (NARP) modeled after the Black Panther Party. In a 1990 update at the end of the book (the original story was recorded in 1975) Maracle brings us forward another 15 years in her life including the birth of her children.
I have very vivid memories of driving through the squalid conditions on the Tsleil-Waututh reserve in North Vancouver during the 60s and 70s. I now have a picture of what life was like for families like Maracle’s, living in those houses. It is a testament to Maracle’s strength and resilience that she could survive those years and go on to be a powerful voice for Indigenous people.
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ISBN
0889611483 / 9780889611481