Michelle Good on her novel Five Little Indians, and the question that guides her writing
Michelle Good's debut novel Five Little Indians will be championed by Christian Allaire on Canada Reads 2022
Not only does Michelle Good understand the power of storytelling, she knows exactly how she wants to wield it. As a kid, she remembers the horrifying stories her mother would share about residential school, and they'd become the drive for her life's work.
Good is a Cree writer and lawyer, as well as a member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. In her 40s, she started practicing law and telling the stories of residential school survivors in courtrooms. In 2020, she published her first novel, Five Little Indians, a national bestseller and multiple award-winning book that aims to deepen understanding of not just what happened in those schools, but what came after.
Kenny, Clara, Howie, Maisie and Lucy are the five characters that comprise Five Little Indians. Released, escaped or rescued from a remote, church-run residential school as teenagers, the five friends enter a hostile world with few life skills or resources. They make their way in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, often confronted by systemic racism and always on the run from the trauma of their childhood.
Five Little Indians will be defended on Canada Reads 2022 by Ojibway author and Vogue fashion writer Christian Allaire. The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan from March 28-31st.
Just before the Canada Reads 2022 line-up was announced, Good sat down with CBC Books to share more of her insights on stories, truth-telling and writing her first novel.
How was your first day of Canada Reads?
It's been quite lovely. I met my champion Christian Allaire, and he is just a lovely person, somebody who I feel is in tune with the book and feels the essence of the book, which I think is critical for a champion. And so, that's been great.
What drew you to start creative writing?
I think I was born with the desire. I really do. I was one of those funny little kids walking around with a little journal under my arm when I was 11, 12 years old.
Observing, considering and recording has been a huge part of my life since I was a child, and that's what we do as writers.
You became a lawyer first, but that is a kind of a storytelling job.
It is entirely about telling a story and being able to convince a decision-maker that your version of the story is the strongest version. It's absolutely about storytelling.
What has writing creatively about the impact of residential schools done for you over the years?
I represented survivors for many years. Before that, when I aged out of foster care because I was a Sixties Scoop kid, many of my own personal experiences were quite similar to some of the characters in the book — struggling to find a way when you're unceremoniously dumped from the care of some agency. Those kinds of things were cathartic to be able to write about.
I first started giving consideration to residential school trauma as a child because my mother was a survivor. There's a little character in there, a secondary character Lily who haemorrhages to death from tuberculosis. And that was the first story that my mother told me. Lily was a real child, and my mother watched her haemorrhage to death from tuberculosis at the residential school.
It was such a shocking thing to be told that it just sent me on this trajectory. This is something that needs to be known. How could anybody, much less my mother, be treated this way?
And so, it's been my life's work, either in poetry, or in short fiction, or in advocacy, or in this book.
I knew right away that I needed more characters to carry the weight of the full spectrum of this story. - Michelle Good
Why did you decide to break the book up into five perspectives?
I wrote the first paragraph in an exercise in the Master of Fine Arts program at UBC. I instantly knew that one character couldn't carry the weight.
There is such a diversity of abuses and experiences, and a huge diversity in terms of their psychological responses to it and their ability to rise above it.
The male experience was different, the female experience was different. I knew right away that I needed more characters to carry the weight of the full spectrum of this story.
It's reflected in your book that when we experience trauma, even when we know we're being mistreated, we can't help but internalize it and feel that we deserve it, even though we don't. Why do you think that happens?
I think that's a very common psychological phenomenon and it's well articulated in that discipline. It's hard to believe that you would be treated that way unless you deserve it.
For example, speaking in Indigenous languages was forbidden in the schools. My mother didn't speak a word of English when she went to residential school. Imagine your circumstances. You're there. The only way you know to verbally communicate is in Cree, and when you speak Cree, someone hits you.
You can't find a way to justify that. You can list through all the things, "What did I do? Why did she do that to me? Why did that person hit me?" And, because you can't come up with a legitimate reason, you begin to internalize and to say, "Well, it must just be me. Since there was no objective reason to do this, it must be me, there must be something wrong with me."
The other thing, too, is that when children are abused as children, they continue to perceive that experience from the perspective of a child. Until they have some kind of meaningful therapeutic intervention, they're not able to externalize it and go, "Wait a minute, I'm not the one that should feel ashamed."
LISTEN | Michelle Good discusses Five Little Indians:
You mentioned earlier that you feel like Christian really understands the essence of the book. How would you describe the essence of the book?
There's a lot to that. I think one of the things that was very important to me was that these characters be fully formed human beings, that they are far more than their trauma, that they feel love and joy. There's humour in the book. There's laughter. There's just the full spectrum of the human experience.
It's not just about the abuse. It's not just about the impact. It's about these people and how those people are very reflective of Indigenous people, and I guess the Indigenous ethos.
As soon as I started talking with Christian, I knew, "He gets it. He recognizes this." And that's really great. I'm really pleased about it.
Do you happen to be a fashion enthusiast?
No, but it was really interesting because, back in the 1990s, I remember thinking there was quite a favourable trend in furniture patterns, in upholstery, where you were starting to see tribal patterns that were being, in effect, appropriated from Indigenous art.
I remember thinking, "Careful." Pay attention when your art is being mass-produced for profit because, for example, in Navajo beadings or those kinds of things, there are stories inherent in those patterns. I think that's one of the things that Christian talks about in his book, The Power of Style, in terms of reaffirming identity through fashion, through design, through art. I think he's doing some wonderful work in that area.
You said, "be careful when your art is mass-produced." Is that something you are mindful of?
A production company has picked up the option to potentially make a limited series out of Five Little Indians. In that negotiation, I made sure that I have some meaningful involvement in how that's going to be presented and interpreted in terms of creating the screenplay and so on and so forth.
But what I'm talking about really when I say "mass produce" is when a thin imitation of a beautiful piece of art is created, like the plastic dream catchers. The things that have meaning in our cultural milieu that are then taken outside of our cultural milieu and made into something completely different.
What was the joyful part of writing this novel?
Those characters. I mean, they were with me for so long and they really came to life very quickly and I fell in love with them. They were like my own children in many ways, and I still feel them around me from time to time.
I say that in sort of a light way, but in my heart, it was also about giving voice to the realities of survivors and that gives me joy to think that there are people reading this book and deepening their understanding of why this goes on and on and on through generations, why there is intergenerational harm and why the suffering continues.
Has there been a particularly meaningful moment from a reader or a critic that read the book?
Dozens and dozens and dozens. I regularly get emails from readers. They move me so deeply.
From non-Indigenous readers, I've had responses like, "I just never knew, but now I'll never forget." And, really thoughtful responses to a deepening understanding and being given an opportunity through this book to reconsider what they think they know.
And, from survivors, both direct and intergenerational, who have responded. Intergenerational survivors say, "Now I understand why my dad or my mom or my auntie was this way." Direct survivors saying, "I can relate to every one of your characters." Those kinds of things are just so incredibly meaningful to me.
I regularly get emails from readers. They move me so deeply.- Michelle Good
That mirrors what Kendra went through at the end, where she starts to understand her father, Kenny, a bit more.
Yeah, and that's such an important aspect because that thing where people say over and over again — 'Oh yeah, my mum went to residential school, but she never talked about it. My auntie or my uncle or my grandma went, but they never talked about it.' Why would they? Why would they want to talk about the most hideous thing that happened to them in their lives, the violent brutality of it all?
This book, I think, helps give survivors, I guess, an affirmation that they've been heard. That's what I want. I want survivors to read this book and say, "Yeah, that's what it was like. May the world finally understand." And, I want the children of survivors to perhaps be more gentle with their parents that can't talk about it.
How did you decide on the title Five Little Indians?
It started with a title referring to the birch trees. And then, for a long time, a working title was Indian School. I was really committed to that because I was driving through Arizona one day and I looked up, there was this big sign on the freeway, "Exit: Indian School Road." The residential schools started in the States, they were all over the States, even more than here. And I just thought, "Oh, that's a sign. Yeah, that's the right title."
But then me and a mentor, we were just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth about the title. And then, one day, I was just sitting there minding my own business and it just came to me in a moment: Five Little Indians. Perfect.
The reason that it was perfect to me is because it's a layered title. There's a terrible, racist nursery rhyme, but then again there's my five little Indians. There they were. They were ripped out of their homes. I felt that title gave notice to whoever is looking at it that this book is going to be about something fundamentally racist.
Especially the cover of the book, the way I look at the cover is that they're walking in an upside down world. So it just came to me. And, that's something I attribute to the ancestors as well. I think it was a gift.
LISTEN | Michelle Good on Afternoon Drive:
Michelle, what guides you as a storyteller?
Spirit.
I guess when I'm writing something, the major question I ask myself is, "Is this true?" I don't mean true in terms of factual. I have often said, "Something need not be factual to be true," but to have an essence of truth, something that is inspirational, that is educational and that contributes something more to the world.
I don't have any critique of this, but for me, I am not "art for the sake of art" in my writing. My writing is an extension of advocacy for me.
Have you always understood the distinction between truth/fact and truth/truth?
I think so. Like I said, I was a weird little kid, but my mom told me once that I used to argue with her on the basis of principle when I was like three years old.
She would say, 'Do this, do that,' and my response to her was, 'But mummy, it's just not right.' My poor mother, she had to deal with me.
But I do think that I was born with a certain sensibility because I remember when I was a little kid and how I looked at the world and how I thought about the world, and thinking, is it true? Is it right?
I guess there has to be a weirdo in every family.
What is your definition of success as a writer?
To create something that moves, inspires, comforts, invigorates.
Thank you so much, Michelle. Will you watch Canada Reads this year? Have you tuned in before?
Oh, I love Canada Reads. But I'm not sure that I will, I'm a little scared. I mean, it's a debate, right? I might just leave it to my champion.
I will say, this is a debut novel, and it's the first book I've ever written. It is standing beside a woman who won the Giller twice, a man who won the Giller last year, and some very powerful experiences, multiple-book-writing authors.
So when they told me that my book was there as well, I was just flabbergasted — I really was — and, so honoured and humbled by this. I know people say that, but it just makes me feel like, "Oh my goodness, this is wonderful." The spirit of this book has taken hold and I love that.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
