Join us every Wednesday in July and August and learn about the Decoda staff’s summer reading picks. Today Maureen Kehler, a Decoda Program Manager, recommends books by Indigenous authors.

I love fiction! When I read fiction, I “try on” a character or two and experience gender, race, growth and change, events of trauma and joy, decisions, feelings, and thoughts that I haven’t experienced in my own life. Reading fiction challenges me to examine my beliefs, my ways of thinking, my biases, my levels of empathy with others who are not like me. It has and will continue to reshape me.

In the last few years, books by Indigenous authors were showing up on many of my reading lists. Many of them have tragic or bleak subject matter but they also tell of the rich Indigenous culture that is surviving against all odds; the resiliency of the people; the activism, the strength, the hope, the humour; the importance of family and belonging.

My Summer Reading Recommendations:

• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
• Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
• Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
• There, There by Tommy Orange
• The Marrow Thieves and Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
• The Break by Katherena Vermette
• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• Crow Winter by Karen McBride
• Moccasin Square Garden by Richard Van Camp
• From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
• Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Next one on my reading list is Indians on Vacation because anything by Thomas King is worth reading. His writing is funny, smart, and gets to the core of things.