The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women

Beverly Rasporich is an associate professor at the University of Calgary
and author of Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice
Munro.

There are many familiar First Nations writers represented in this
volume: Chrystos, Jeanette Armstrong, Connie Fife, Lenore
Keeshig-Tobias, Beth Cuthand, Lee Maracle, Annharte, Beth Brant. Through
a medley of poetry, fiction, and articles, the voices here recollect,
protest, and reclaim for Native peoples and, more particularly, for
Native women. The poetry is largely of a narrative variety, and
inflected with orality, while the stories are written in simple prose
style. Lee Maracle’s “The Laundry Basket” suggests a more mature
writer, and Beth Brant’s “This Is History” is a sophisticated
retelling (and reprinting) of the Aboriginal Sky Woman creation myth.

One of the strengths of the collection is a handful of poets/poems that
distinguish themselves in a variety of ways. Marie Rendon’s is a voice
of irreverent and wry spirit, as illustrated in a poem about a
“laughin’ woman”: “in Denver she had a Navajo / he asked, ‘can
I buy you a drink?’ / she said, ‘no, take me home.’ / he was quite
surprised, / it wasn’t even closing time.” Laura Tohe’s “Blue
Horses Running” is a beautifully colored poem of desertscape and
ancestral space. There are some stirring poems here, as well, that
argue, protest, and mourn the plights of Native women.