d'Amanda Skenandore.
Synopsis –
On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake.
The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart.
Mon avis/What I Think –
J’ai encore pleuré !
Une histoire encore puissante sur l’assimilation forcée des Native Americans, les écoles qui gomment et changent ces jeunes enfants pour les transformer en hommes civilisés.
Or, tout cela n’est que mensonges et hypocrisie car ils seront toujours trop indiens et pas assez blancs pour pouvoir prospérer.
Le retour dans les réserves est souvent teinté de désillusions et de maltraitance de la part du gouvernement américain.
Bien évidemment, j’aurais tellement voulu qu’Alma finisse avec George. Pour unir le ciel et la terre.
Alma déconstruit péniblement tout ce qu’on lui a inculqué dès sa plus tendre enfance et ce voyage n’est pas sans heurts.
Les chapitres sont courts et l’alternance entre le passé et le présent permet de comprendre plus en détail l’histoire et les enjeux de l’intrigue.
Bref, j’ai beaucoup aimé.
I cried again!
A still powerful story about the forced assimilation of Native Americans, the schools that erase and change these young children to transform them into civilized men.
However, all of this is just lies and hypocrisy because they will always be too Indian and not white enough to be able to prosper.
The return to the reservations is often tinged with disillusionment and mistreatment by the American government.
Of course, I would have so much wanted Alma to end up with George. To unite heaven and earth.
Alma painfully deconstructs everything she was taught from a very young age, and this journey is not without its bumps.
The chapters are short, and the alternation between the past and the present allows for a more detailed understanding of the story and the stakes of the plot.
In short, I really liked it.
