Richard Wagamese

I left home at sixteen, and I was effectively homeless from the age of sixteen to twenty-four. I spent the larger part of those years in the shelter of a library reading books—books after books after books. Most of them came from a note pad I carried around in my pocket: I would eavesdrop on conversations and if people were talking about stuff that felt as if it had great weight and consequence I would write that down and take it to the library and ask for books on that subject, and then sit at the table by the window and read them. I gave myself a broad education. I read everything from poetry to astrophysics and all stops in between. It enables me to encounter the power and purpose of words on paper. [Listen to the interview on MPR.org]

I think Dream Wheels was my first effort to step beyond the barriers that we sometimes erect around ourselves in terms of storytelling. As Native American and indigenous authors, we sometimes tend to write stories that involve us being survivors—surviving or transcending some degree of horror or difficulty—and I wanted to create a family who didn’t have any of that. In this novel, nobody’s a drunk, nobody’s homeless, nobody’s going to prison or coming out. Nobody’s doing all these things that sometimes color our narratives. [Listen to the interview on MPR.org]

I really like what Lenny Bruce said a long time ago, that if the president came on TV and said the N-word over and over till it lost its power, it would just be a word. For me, the way we are referred to by non-aboriginal people doesn’t really have an impact on me because I know who and what I am. Slurs — they just kind of slide off my back these days. I’m too old to pick a fight, I can’t run as fast, and I’m more a man of peace than I was in my younger days. What’s a word, anyways? It’s our weakest form of communication. Our strongest form of communication is our feelings and our spirituality. [Read more at the Edmonton Journal]