When the Other is Me
Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990
Overview
In this long-awaited book from one of the most recognized and respected scholars in Native Studies today, Emma LaRocque presents a powerful interdisciplinary study of the Native literary response to racist writing in the Canadian historical and literary record from 1850 to 1990. In When the Other is Me, LaRocque brings a metacritical approach to Native writing, situating it as resistance literature within and outside the postcolonial intellectual context. She outlines the overwhelming evidence of dehumanization in Canadian historical and literary writing, its effects on both popular culture and Canadian intellectual development, and Native and non-Native intellectual responses to it in light of the interlayered mix of romanticism, exaggeration of Native difference, and the continuing problem of internalization that challenges our understanding of the colonizer/colonized relationship.
Reviews
“When the Other Is Me offers many important insights and analytical tools to continue the struggle for decolonization in Canada and the fight for a more humane, just world.”
Labour, Spring 2011
“When the Other Is Me reviews a broad range of Native resistance literature and makes several valuable theoretical interventions. LaRocque’s bold acknowledgment and defense of her own positionality is especially notable. This book will interest scholars of Native literature as well as those wresting with the challenges of producing Native-centered scholarship.”
James Jenkins, University of Texas at Austin, Studies in American Indian Literatures
Awards
Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction (2011)
