Re-read E. Pauline Johnson's "The Tenas Klootchman" (which means "girl baby" in Chinook) for the first time in nearly twenty years (?). Some of the pieces I've re-read for my book's entry on Johnson have been kind of haunting me, like "A Cry from an Indian Wife," which seems depressingly familiar as war rages in Gaza. This is not a criticism of the pieces, of course--rather a testament to their enduring power.
But "The Tenas Klootchman," in which a dying mother gives her baby to a woman who has already lost her own little girl, makes me want to sob in a good way--and judging by my faded marginal note, it did the same all those years ago.
Work Cited
Johnson, E. Pauline. E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: Collected Poems and Selected Prose. Edited by Carole Gerson and Veronica Strong-Boag. U of Toronto P, 2002.
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