IMAGINATION WRITERS’ FESTIVAL:
Moon of the Turning Leaves paints a picture of hopeful dystopia
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
As the world shut down in March and April 2020, layers of public health restrictions put the world we once knew behind glass, before they were stripped away, reimposed, stripped away and reimposed again – remember the red, orange and yellow zones?
Bread-baking, video games and houseplant growing became popular lockdown hobbies, as people sought to escape from the inevitable waves of anxiety. Sudbury, Ont. author Waubgeshig Rice, however, coped by immersing himself in an even darker dystopia.
His 2018 debut novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, follows the residents of a fictional northern Ontario Anishnaabe reserve as they deal with the aftermath of an unspecified apocalyptic event. When the power goes out, no one in the small community is particularly worried at first – after all, many older residents can still remember a time before electricity – but once food and fuel deliveries stop and refugees start showing up on the outskirts of the reserve, it becomes clear something much darker is afoot. While some passages might have seemed unimaginable to North American readers in 2018, events like a grocery store run and the instant disappearance of regular school and work routines take on a chest-tightening familiarity for anyone with memories of 2020.
However, the community’s experience with colonialism, forced displacement and isolation gives it a unity and resilience that surrounding non-Native communities lack. An elder observes that her native language lacks a word for apocalypse. “Our world isn’t ending, it already ended … Apocalypse, we’ve had that over and over and we’re still here.” As dark as the novel is, with a sharp realism reminiscent of Scandinavian crime novels, it’s also shot through with humour, hope and breath- taking landscapes.
During the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020, Rice started working on the book’s sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves. The sequel follows a new generation on their quest to find a safe place to take root after resources near the old reserve begin to run short. Like its predecessor, it’s a dark, rich story full of hope and resilience amid testing times. As Rice put it, he wanted to “flip the trope of death and despair” present in a lot of dystopian literature and in many literary depictions of Indigenous life.
Rice, a former CBC Radio host, discussed both novels with CBC Quebec producer Kim Garrity at the Imagination Writers’ Festival at the Morrin Centre on April 9. “I was here with Moon of the Crusted Snow [in 2018] and to return here with Moon of the Turning Leaves is special,” he said.
He talked about the im- portance of the land and of the reappropriation of the Anishinaabe language and culture in his books. “As an Indigenous person, I have the apocalypse in my lineage,” he said, referring to the mass deaths from disease and war which followed European contact; attempts by colonial governments to forcibly move entire First Nations, force historically nomadic peoples to remain in settlements and outlaw cultural practices; and the residential school system.
“Our parents’ generation brought back the drums and took over the school,” said Rice, 44, who is relearning the Anishinaabe language as an adult. “It was a wide-scale collective trauma response, but it had such a positive influence on me and my peers.”
As Moon of the Turning Leaves closes, readers meet a 12-year-old girl, the original hero’s granddaughter, who has never known electricity, spoken English or encountered a culture other than her own, peppering her grandmother with questions about the old days. Although Rice said that “almost 10 years being immersed in a postapocalyptic future does take a toll,” he did not rule out the idea of a trilogy.