num_pages: 368
description: Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel one that combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics. Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii the old man who represents the narrators will; Ninaatig the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe the giant who represents their marrow; Adik the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids Ziploc baggies Fjllrven Knken backpacks and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned contained counted and consumed. Cut off from nature the characters are cut off from their natural selves.Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for in the bush and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodies 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpsons work is an act of decolonization degentrification and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people animals ancestors and spirits who are all busy with the daily labours of healing  healing not only themselves but their individual pieces of the network of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.
language: English
title: Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies
publisher: House of Anansi Press