There are no pronouns in Cree for gender; awâsis (which means illuminated child) reveals herself through shapeshifting, adopting different genders, exploring the English language with merriment, and sharing his journey of mishaps with humor, mystery, and spirituality. Opening with a joyful and intimate Foreword from Elder Maria Campbell, awâsis — kinky and dishevelled is a force of Indigenous resurgence, resistance, and soul-healing laughter.
If you’ve read Halfe’s previous books, prepared to be surprised by this one. Raging in the dark, uncovering the painful facts wrought on her and her people’s lives by colonialism, racism, religion, and residential schools, she has walked us through raw realities with unabashed courage and intense, precise lyricism. But for her fifth book, another choice presented itself. Would she carve her way with determined ferocity into the still-powerful destructive forces of colonialism, despite Canada’s official, hollow promises to make things better? After a soul-searching Truth and Reconciliation process, the drinking water still hasn’t improved, and Louise began to wonder whether inspiration had deserted her.
Then awâsis showed up — a trickster, teacher, healer, wheeler-dealer, shapeshifter, woman, man, nuisance, inspiration. A Holy Fool with their fly open, speaking Cree, awâsis came to Louise out of the ancient stories of her people, from the quiet words of the Elders, from community input through tears and laughter, from her own aching heart and her three-dimensional dreams. Following awâsis’s lead, Louise has flipped her blanket over, revealing a joking, mischievous, unapologetic alter ego—right on time.
Praise for awâsis:
“Rambunctious and playful, these vibrant poem-stories laugh and reveal, disrupt and heal. Their language leaps, does backflips, blazes like a shooting star, sneaks up, announces itself with a belch. Wherever the sly, witty and wise Awâsis (the “illuminated child”) turns up, the heart of human experience appears in all its surprising complexity and absurdity. This is Louise B. Halfe – Sky Dancer at her most accomplished.” — Jury Citation, 2022 Raymond Souster Award
“Louise Halfe knows, without question, how to make miyo-iskotêw, a beautiful fire with her kindling of words and moss gathered from a sacred place known only to her, to the Old Ones. These poems, sharp and crackling, are among one of the most beautiful fires I’ve ever sat beside.” — Gregory Scofield, author of Witness, I Am
“Louise makes awâsis out of irreverent sacred text. The darkness enlightens. She uses humor as a scalpel and sometimes as a butcher knife, to cut away, or hack off, our hurts, our pain, our grief and our traumas. In the end we laugh and laugh and laugh.” — Harold R. Johnson, author of Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
“This is all about Indigenizing and reconciliation among ourselves. It’s the kind of funny, shake up, poking, smacking, and farting we all need while laughing our guts out. It’s beautiful, gentle and loving.” — Marie Campbell, author of Halfbreed (from the Foreword)
“’Indians laugh. That’s what they do.’ So says awâsis, the ‘kinky and disheveled’ spirit who appears as many characters in Sky Dancer’s storytelling romp that reveals the jokes, the life beneath them, and beneath those, listen up, a profound and joyous worldview. The point for you, awâsis would say, is to laugh with us. awâsis is the innocence shining in all created things; the trickster who knows the fart is greater than the storm, for the fart moves the spirit from within. In its poetic mirth, this is a book for those who have no wall between the planet and themselves – and for those who want to be rid of the walls of disdain that keep them apart from the pleasures of their own flesh. This is what it is like, awâsis will show you, to love the body in all its predicaments, in all its humours.” — Richard Harrison, author of On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood
Press Coverage:
“Halfe’s most recent book, awâsis — kinky and disheveled, is an inventive and playful collection that invites the reader into worlds/words/ways they will want to revisit again and again. My copy of this book is already dog-eared and marked up.”— Wendy McGrath, Herizons Magazine
