It honestly took me a while to get used to the author’s writing style and the format — sharing a bit about Metis and Cree traditions, then going into how this relates to her familial dynamics and history. However, once I felt up to speed with it, I was fully on board and zoomed through this book! Chyana Marie Sage is incredibly brave and generous in sharing her family’s story with us, as I imagine it opened and/or pushed on wounds/bruises that she and her family have been navigating for far too long. She openly shares her family’s devastation, rage, and fear as they realized the heartbreaking betrayal of her father, who was both her favorite person and deeply flawed. I loved and deeply related to the nuance with which she spoke about every single person in her family, including herself. It’s easy to paint someone as a one-dimensional villain and yourself as the perfectly well-rounded, good-hearted human in comparison. Sage does not shy away from admitting she held both love, respect, and enthusiasm for her father as a child, and confusion, sadness, and grief at other times. I am not Metis or Cree, but as a first-generation kid of immigrants who hold different beliefs than me, it would be easy for me to just make blanket statements about them overall. However, there are moments where I deeply connect with them, and/or miss them, flaws and all. I viscerally felt this pull of emotions from Sage, and I am so grateful she shared them so candidly. I also loved this line of “I am an Indian, a Native, an Aboriginal, an Indigenous. I can’t keep up with the terms because they keep renegotiating who we are. What we deserve. Even my own people are bogged down with the politically correct way to introduce ourselves, and then we go on to persecute our kin who use the wrong term. That is a symptom of the colonized. It’s exhausting. But I can also say that I am a smudger, a listening student, a dreamcatcher weaver, a drum maker, a girl in a Sweat, and a storyteller.” (96%) I love and appreciate the reminder that no group is a monolith, and that intersectionality matters. Her ending notes on “there is no such thing as healed–there is only movement along the spectrum of unawareness to awareness.” (97%) OH MY GOSHHHH, IT MAKES SENSE SHE IS A POET TOO BECAUSE SHE JUST DROPS BARS OKAY!?!?!!?!!? This is something I am working on too, as a 34 year old, just being vigilantly aware and trying to move forward with intention. I hope more of us can accept that we are not experts, we are not done learning, and that there is always more room for reflection and awareness. Really glad I read this, and I recommend it to all! <3
Soft as Bones: A Memoir by Chyana Marie Sage, (List Price: $21.99, House of Anansi Press, 9781487013028, May 2025)
Reviewed by Jade B., Steamy Lit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida