Blurb:
| The debut novella from the Elgin Award winning author of Elegies of Rotting Stars. After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him-about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up. On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channeling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another. |
This is a book about grief, nature, and how death
transforms. And when you’re finished, you’ll love wetlands and never look at
fungi the same way again.
Despite being a landscape artist who relies on nature to
make a living, Rita is very separated from it. She’s a germaphobe (due to her
mother) who lives in the city with her white girlfriend Maddie. Rita also
incorporates inspiration from her cultural heritage, despite being disconnected
from that too. She’s barely in contact with the Mi’kmaw family. She only
remembers bits of the Mi’kmaw her father taught her, and while she can recognize
Gomgwejui'gasit (Suckerfish script), she can’t read it. This makes it difficult
for her to talk to other family members when her father dies or receive the
same level of community support as her half-brother, who lives on the
reservation with the rest of their family. Rita feels alone in her grief because
she’s so isolated from her family, with Maddie offering little support. Rita is
not able to say goodbye to her father in his home, like she traditionally
would, but in a hospital hooked up to machines, which traumatizes her. Rita’s
grief over losing her father is so severe that she has PTSD. Morris describes
her grief as a devouring green, a chlorophyll feeding and transforming Rita.
She feels guilt (not uncommon for someone
who’s grieving), afraid she’s not mourning “correctly” and that it’s
selfish and impersonal.
Part of Rita’s alienation from
nature also means she is not connected to the natural process of death and
rebirth, despite feeling like she and the land are both dying, “flailing fish
on a drying shore”. Mi'kmaw
artist Alan Syliboy, who created an art
exhibit that will focus on Mi'kmaw traditions around death, told
CBC "…in Mi'kmaw society, death is not covered or hidden. When you're
a child, you're aware [of it]." Rita, however, is surrounded by
Euro-American culture, which rarely interacts with death outside the funeral
industrial complex. One of the tenets of the death
positivity movement is that hiding death behind closed doors and surrounding
it with a culture of silence does more harm than good. Another tenet is
that death should be handled in a way that “does not do great harm to the
environment” and encourages green
burials. Historically, both things would have been practiced in most
cultures, but the invention of the toxic embalming process took death customs
out of the home and created a for-profit industry. If you’re interested in
learning more about the history of embalming and the birth of the funeral
industry, my sister has made a great video about it here. Today, standard
funeral practices such as embalming and cremation are devastating the
environment, poisoning the land and air.
The theme of environmental devastation is present throughout
the book. It’s the Frog Croaking Moon, Squoljikus (around May), but the heat
from climate
change makes the loons think it’s summer and Rita can hear their mating
calls. The Mi’kmaw names for the months, like the Trees Fully Leafed Moon, no
longer match seasonal changes. She describes the heat as “unbearable” and feels
like she’s being smothered by it. A history of colonial violence is inexorably
linked to the current environmental crisis. Colonizers brought with them
industrialization and capitalism, treating nature and its resources as
something to be exploited. Indigenous environmental justice addresses both the
injustices suffered by Indigenous people and the current climate crisis. Kānaka
Maoli (Native Hawaiian) organizer Kaniela Ing wrote
"Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by the climate
crisis because we maintain the closest ties to our natural environment.” He also
wrote “Any climate solution would be incomplete without justice at its
core. Kānaka Maoli, Native Hawaiians, should be central to the rebuilding and
recovery efforts. We should have the authority to manage our lands and
resources.”
The water
protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are probably the best
known example of Indigenous environmental justice. There’s also Shiela
Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit Indigenous rights activist, and author of the book
“Right
to be Cold.” In it she writes about how global warming is destroying her
home by melting the permafrost and ice caps, and causing unpredictable weather
patterns. Dario
Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, combats illegal gold mining and deforestation
in the Brazilian Amazon. And Rick
O’Rourke, fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management
Council, uses traditional Yurok knowledge of controlled burns to prevent forest
fires in the Klamath mountains of northern California.
Throughout the book nature is described in a way that makes it seem violent and alien, and Rita is shown to be fearful of it (she’s even terrified of harmless moths), with a good dose of body horror mixed in to represent her fear. But as time passes, and Rita feels her body being reclaimed by nature her fear slowly morphs into acceptance. She even considers walking into the forest and disappearing. Morris’ descriptions of Rita’s strong emotions and fears feels like a frenzied fever dream, with the environment becoming a character itself. Her descriptions of grief are powerful and moved me to tears as I remembered my own experiences with grieving. With Green Fuse Burning Morris has created a beautiful, deeply personal story that flows like poetry.
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