Rumming Our Way Home

Drumming Our Way Home

What does it mean to be Secwepemc? And how can an autobiographical journey to recover Secwepemc identity inform learning and teaching? Drumming Our Way Home demonstrates how telling, retelling, and re-storying lived experiences not only passes on traditional ways but also opens up a world of culture-based learning. Georgina Martin was taken from her mother not long after birth in a tuberculosis hospital. Her experience is representative of the intergenerational trauma inflicted by the Canadian state on Indigenous Peoples. Here she tells her story and invites Elder Jean William and youth Colten Wycotte to reflect critically on their own family and community experiences. Throughout, she is guided by her hand drum, reflecting on its use as a way to uphold community protocols and honour teachings. Her journey provides a powerful example of reconnection to culture through healing, affirmation, and intergenerational learning. Drumming Our Way Home is evidence of the value of storytelling as a tool for teaching, learning, and making meaning.

The Tin Drum

One of the greatest modern novels, The Tin Drum is the story of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Matzerath provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world. In this edition, Breon Mitchell, acclaimed translator and scholar, draws from a wealth of detailed scholarship to produce a translation that is more faithful to Grass's style and rhythm than the 1959 translation, restoring omissions and reflecting the complexity of the original work. After more than sixy years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance. All of Grass's amazing evocations are still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, the indomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother, Agnes; Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski, his presumptive fathers; Oskar's midget friends—Bebra, the great circus master and Roswitha Raguna, the famous somnambulist; Sister Scholastica and Sister Agatha, the Right Reverend Father Wiehnke; the Greffs, the Schefflers, Herr Fajngold, all Kashubians, Poles, Germans, and Jews—waiting to be discovered and re-discovered.

The Illustrated American