Indians Don’t Cry
by George Kenny
Winnipeg, MB: U Manitoba Press, 2014
The eponymous first story in Indians Don’t Cry establishes the themes that are returned to throughout the book: separation, loss, and the frustration that comes from being caught in a system that affects the lives of the characters so much but that the world beyond knows little — and cares little — about. In “Indian’s Don’t Cry,” the frustration stems from the government’s requirement that children go to a school far away from their home on a reserve in Northern Ontario. Their father has tried to find and keep work near where they will live, but when that fails, he returns to the reserve, where his resources are. And so, his children are taken each year for many months to live in a different world and change without him there to guide them, returning each year, increasingly as strangers. All there is to do is cry.
The effects of separation are returned to from many different angles. In “On the Shooting of a Beaver,” a young man returns home to hunt on his father’s trapline; the son has become used to city life, and is uncertain where he belongs. When a beaver appears, he hesitates, unsure if he should shoot it with his camera, which is his preference, or his gun, which is his father’s. “Welcome” has a young man waiting for his girlfriend to return from school. Her letters have become infrequent, but he remains hopeful until she returns, pregnant with the child of a man she has met down south. In “Summer Down on Loon Lake” a young woman tries to find a way to tell her family she will not be coming back to the reserve once she is done with school; her life is now elsewhere. In all these stories, the characters have been shown a world away from the one they have known, and are unable to go back to their former lives. The catch, as shown in stories such as “Track Star” and “Dirty Indian,” is that they are not be welcomed in this new world; they are othered by racism, trapped between two worldsd uncertain of where they belong.
The strength of these stories are their honesty. The writing is for the most part straightforward, but Kenny occasionally falls into a habit of over-explaining. It’s as though he doesn’t trust the power of his writing to convey the essence or thoughts of his characters. Physical traits are shoe-horned in; at the start of a story a character will look in the mirror to excuse a description. Thoughts are handled similarly, with Kenny stating feelings that are already clear through context. It’s the sort of prose that first-time writers (as Kenny is in this book) feel they need, but as their confidence grows they rely on it less. These missteps are minor, and I it would not have been so distracting to read if it weren’t for the fact that the poems have none of this, and are so much stronger for it.
With the limited space of verse, Kenny boils the words down to the bare minimum—which results in some of the most effective writing in the book. “I Don’t Know this October Stranger” touches on all the themes of his stories — change, loss, separation — but in only a handful of lines. Another fine example of allowing the characters room to develop by understatement occurs in “Death is No Stranger.” The woman is not described; the strength of the words creates a vision of her in the reader’s mind. She stands by a grave, her partner buried, worrying about her children. In five short stanzas, a life unfolds; her husband, her kids, the oppressive past and inescapable future.
The near-perfect “Old Daniel” is the most powerful piece in the book. The poem opens with a scene of the old First Nations ways — smoke and laughter in a wigwam, the comfort of family —quickly brought into the present in the form of reminisces by an old man interred at an senior’s home. The visiting relative promises better times ahead and leaves, forgetting about Old Daniel until he receives a call, months later, asking him to arrange the funeral. Almost a hundred years of change, history, and loss are driven home; Old Daniel’s time is being forgotten, and no one, not even his relatives, much care.
Indians Don’t Cry was originally published in 1977. Since then, it seems Kenny has written little — the supplementary material in the new edition mentions only an unpublished memoir. It’s a shame that a writer, who in his first collection showed so much promise in pieces such as “Old Daniel” and “Dirty Indian” —which should be required reading for all Canadians — would go silent. I sincerely hope this new edition will find the audience it so much deserves, and precipitate a follow up.
