INTRODUCTION
This reading guide is designed to accompany Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s picture book When I Was Eight.. We hold the belief that anti-racist practice is a process of learning (and unlearning) over time. Reading Is Resistance sees reading as an opportunity to seed deeper conversations and possibilities for action around racial justice in our communities.
Lesson content was written by Zapoura Newton-Calvert and was designed to start and deepen anti-bias/anti-racist conversations in families and other learning communities.
BOOK THEMES
IDENTITY, ASSIMILATION, RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS, BELONGING, FAMILY
BOOK SUMMARY
In this story, eight-year-old Olemaun, a member of the Inuit community, knows the rhythm of the seasons and the animals. But she wants to learn to read in English like her big sister who went to the outsider school. She finally begs her father so much that he gives in and lets her go, but school is not what Olemaun expected. The nuns running the school cut her hair, give her scratchy clothes to wear, name her Margaret, and force the children to work. Somehow, even with this oppressive treatment, Olemaun is resilient and keeps her sense of self. This is a story of the real history of trauma from residential schooling in the U.S. and Canada and of resistance from a small girl determined to read but not to lose herself in the process.