Mamaskatch

“Affecting and full of heart … Through these fragmented stories, we see McLeod navigating conflicting desires within his sexual, spiritual, and native identities, and ultimately thriving.”

“Readers … will share in the secret knowledge that coming-of-age has little to do with losing one’s innocence and everything to do with maintaining one’s hope. Lyrically written and linked by family, compassion, forgiveness, and hope, Mamaskatch sings out as a modern day-celebrate of healing.”

“McLeod tells [his story] movingly and beautifully. It’s a dark book, but a hopeful one too, as McLeod finds ways of understanding and coming to terms with his complicated life.”

“A window into the world of the Cree … This is not your ordinary coming-of-age story; it’s a multilayered account of a boy growing into manhood questioning his own gender identity while also confronting racism and bullying.”

“Mamaskatch reminded me of my childhood and the Indigenous people I love dearly. The hard and brilliant life breathing on the pages brought me to tears, to joy, and to grace. Darrel J. McLeod tells a coming-of-age tale familiar to many Indigenous people, but our histories, and our families’ truths, are mostly unwritten. The work he’s doing is powerful and overdue.”

“A heart-wrenching mîwâsin memoir full of vignettes that are so intricately woven that they guide you through with grace, sâkihiwêwin, humour, and maskihkîy. This is a narrative built through continuums that detail the lives of the McLeod family through their queer travails, trans realities, bannock and stew conversations, and a plethora of intergenerational traumas and triumphs. I can feel the warm embrace of the Three Sisters wrapping around me as I read this, that heart-drum beat resounding beneath its literary cadences, the frigidity of the Athabasca kissing my heels, and a narrator who teaches me from his very first passage in this memoir that a good story is a medicine song that re-members and re-animates, in true nehiyawewin fashion, those who have paved the way for us and those for whom we pave.”

“Mamaskatch dares to immerse readers in provocative contemporary issues including gender fluidity, familial violence, and transcultural hybridity. A fast-moving, intimate memoir of dreams and nightmares—lyrical and gritty, raw and vulnerable, told without pity, but with phoenix-like strength.”

“A profound and tender love song, an elegy to a wounded family, and an unsparing, exquisitely moving chronicle of growing up ‘Nehiyaw’ (Cree). Like the birdsong his mother taught him to understand, McLeod’s voice is magical; it will lift and carry you through bone-breaking grief with grit, optimism and wry, life-saving humour. You will not leave this book unchanged.”

“Darrel McLeod’s book, Mamaskatch, tells a brutally honest, first-hand account of the consequences family and, in the broader sense, society has on the development of individual identity. In telling his story, Darrel provides a well written insight into the most beautiful and devastating parts of his life … Mamaskatch is a compelling read.”

“A powerful, unflinching work of non-fiction, one that isn’t afraid to leave itself raw and unfinished, nodding to the stories that are yet to come… . The figures McLeod writes about in Mamaskatch shimmer in the best kind of way… . Nothing, however, appears as brightly or as darkly as Bertha. The parts of the book written from her perspective pulse with their own kind of intensity… . Mamaskatch embodies the recognition of the way stories can help to pull one through the darkest moments.” &

“Honestly stunning. McLeod’s clear writing lays bare his complicated ties to his family, his lovers and his country in a memoir that moved and haunted me.”

“A compelling read that shows the heartbreaking results of imposed oppression. McLeod has identity problems of many kinds and the result is a life full of chaos. The gradual climb out of that dark place is touching.”

“Reading the text was like diving into the eternity of dreams and being paralyzed by a nightmare. However, there is sunrise. Told candidly and with heartbreaking honesty, McLeod’s memoir shows how survival beckoned and he held on to the spirit of his ancestors—the love that no one can ever sever. He lives for all of us.”