Happy book birthday to Alicia Elliott‘s highly-anticipated book, A MIND SPREAD OUT ON THE GROUND, publishing today with Doubleday Canada!
A bold and profound work by the Haudenosaunee writer, this debut essay collection is a personal and critical meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America.
In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism.
Pre-publication praise:
CBC Books list of “10 must-read Canadian books this March” and list of “19 non-fiction titles to read this Spring”
Loan Stars Top 10 list for March 2019
Featured in the Toronto Star‘s Spring Preview
Chatelaine‘s list of “The Buzziest Books of 2019”
“The gifted Tuscarora writer…powerfully links larger questions of Indigenous life in North America to the unfolding of her own life.”
—Maclean‘s list of “books you need to read in 2019”
“This book is hard, vital medicine. It is a dance of survival and cultural resurgence. Above all, it is breathtakingly contemporary Indigenous philosophy, in which the street is also part of the land, and the very act of thinking is conditioned by struggles for justice and well-being.” —Warren Cariou, author of Lake of the Prairies
“These essays are of fiercest intelligence and courageous revelation. Here, colonialism and poverty are not only social urgencies, but violence felt and fought in the raw of the everyday, in embodied life and intimate relations. This is a stunning, vital triumph of writing.” —David Chariandy, author of Brother
“Wildly brave and wholly original, Alicia Elliot is the voice that rouses us from the mundane, speaks political poetry and brings us to the ceremony of every day survival. Her words remind us to carry both our weapons and our medicines, to hold both our strength and our open, weeping hearts. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is what happens when you come in a good way to offer prayer, and instead, end up telling the entire damn truth of it all.” —Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves
“A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a new lens on Indigenous Canadian literature.”
—Terese Marie Mailhot, author of Heart Berries
“We need to clone Alicia Elliott because the world needs more of this badass writer. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground showcases her peculiar alchemy, lighting the darkest corners of racism, classism, sexism with her laser-focused intellect and kind-hearted soul-searching. A fresh and revolutionary cultural critic alternately witty, vulnerable and piercing.” —Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift
“The future of CanLit is female, is Indigenous—is Alicia Elliott. I anticipate this book to be featured on every ‘best of’ and award list in 2019, and revered for years to come.”
—Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men and even this page is white
“In A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Elliott invites readers into her unceded mind and heart, taking us on a beautiful, incisive and punk rock tour of Tuscarora brilliance. Elliott’s voice is fire with warmth, light, rage and endless transformation.”
—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of This Accident of Being Lost
“Alicia Elliott has gifted us with an Indigenous woman’s coming of age story, told through engagingly thoughtful, painfully poignant and enraging essays on race, love and belonging. With poetic prose and searing honesty, she lays bare what it is like to grow up Indigenous and exist in a country proud of its tolerance, but one that has proven to be anything but. She opens eyes and captures hearts, leading you by the hand to see our fractured world through her eyes. Alicia is exactly the voice we need to hear now.” —Tanya Talaga, author of Seven Fallen Feathers
“Incisive. That’s the word I keep coming back to. A Mind Spread out on the Ground is incredibly incisive. Alicia Elliot slices through the sometimes complicated, often avoided issues affecting so many of us in this place now called Canada. She is at once political, personal, smart, funny, global and, best of all, divinely human. Necessary. That’s the other word I keep thinking about. In every chapter, she manages to find the perfect word and the precise argument needed—I found myself saying ‘yes, yes, that is exactly it’ more than once. I am so grateful for her work.”
—Katherena Vermette, author of The Break
“A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is an astonishing book of insightful and affecting essays that will stay with you long after the final page.”
—Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People