When Eden Robinson first released her debut novel, Monkey Beach, it was met with nearly universal acclaim. A member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations, Robinson was one of the first female Canadian Native writers to gain international attention. Bringing to light the struggles of Canadian Native Americans, her novel offers her comparisons to other greats, Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, who hailed her novel as “tough, tender, and fierce.” Read on for Robinson’s own thoughts on her novel and its evolution.
{buybutton id=16188/}What is Monkey Beach about?
Monkey Beach is a coming-of-age ghost story set in my father’s community of Kitamaat Village, British Columbia, a small Haisla reserve on the West Coast. Lisa’s brother goes missing during a fishing accident, and, as the family waits for news, Lisa remembers their childhood together.
Can you tell us about the major characters in the novel?
The sasquatch, or b’gwus, is the main supernatural creature in the book, but my father said he was disappointed there weren’t more running around. My mother is Heiltsuk and said I needed to write more Heiltsuk characters. I told her my next book is a trashy, band council romance. She said, well, the book after that one has to have more Heiltsuk representation. The trashy romance can stay in Kitamaat Village.
How did you come up with the idea for the book?
My favorite bedtime stories growing up were drowning stories. My mother shares my grim sensibility, so she’d tell me all the stories about the different ways people drowned in our fishing communities. The first version of this book was a bunch of anecdotes about six different people drowning. In later versions, I added a protagonist and a plot. I spent about five years thinking about it, and another five years writing and editing it.
The AIM activists were inspired by my aunts who told me stories about becoming politically active in the 70s. I chose to set the book in the village where I grew up because novels are hard and it was one less thing I had to research.
For more information about Eden Robinson and her works, visit her author page here.