“For All the Queer NDN Foster Kids Out There”

This memoir of poetry, dedicated to “all the queer NDN foster kids out there,” cuts deep and softly, using intense imagery to describe the transformations and experiences within jaye simpson's upbringing as a Native queer person who was fostered throughout their childhood in (violent and invalidating at best) white settler Canadian houses. Their work it was never going to be okay deals with gender, race, trauma, parenting, child abuse, sexual assault, identity, history, child separation, settler colonialism, embodiment, and other life-and-death subjects. However, their work also portrays their persistence, survivance, and commitment to healing the unspeakable. The excerpt from “healing // sacrifice // necessity” below describes how damages to the poet's body are addressed through wound-clearing recognition by participation in embodied healing practices that allow simpson to access deep self-worth, relationship to ceremony, to land, to healing.reopen old wounds to drain decade-old poison & use traditional medicine to heal these adhesions, abrasions & bruises; grow hair out to braid in sweetgrass & twigs, use creek-cool clay to set fragmented and fractured bones, lay tobacco tie after tobacco tie down, I am worth every single one, my healing is worthevery prayer, every song, every ceremony (88)Simpson's formatting in this award-winning and gut-wrenching exposition shows readers exactly how they feel, and we feel it with them. There are many spaces in their writing, spaces where the silence can be filled by the reader's assumptions, the reader's pain, the writer's memories, of things too difficult to say quickly. Simpson gives their readers moments of memory in little pieces, then sometimes all at once in a way that is very powerful. The poems share a clear theme of longing to belong, but experiencing rejection from those with whom they attempt to create family or community. In the poem “inheritance,” they address this theme boldly and vulnerably. This compounded rejection of their gender identity and cultural identity is reflected through the lens of inheritance from parental trauma patterns, as simpson writes, “Sometimes the only inheritance / a child gets is the reminder / of how unwanted they were, / features left / only to haunt” (38). This painful poem discusses the desire to reconnect with their biological father and considers “what parts of me ar mine / if i am still scared of an absentee father's opinion” (39). One thing I appreciate about this collection is that, despite all the anger, pain, and trauma, simpson takes a long view of their situation throughout and lays blame on the land and child theft of settler colonialism instead of parents who were also traumatized in a way that holds them in grace even through hard truths.There are so many rich points of intersection for interrogating current notions of identity, including racial and gender identity. However, the book also lays bare, in a vindicating and honest way, the violence of colonial systems of supposed “improvement” used throughout colonial spaces, the harms to patterns of lineality and kinship networks that occur through colonial adoption (theft) of Indigenous children into settler family structures. Many of the pieces in this collection also directly interrogate the ethics of adoption, especially within colonialism, making the timing of this text even more important, given the current US Supreme Court hearings regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act, which is currently under threat and protects children in a minimal way from being put in the position that simpson was raised in (away from relatives, culture, or family ties with a racist white cishetnormative family). In “teeth and sharp bones (a dialogue),” the long, troubled history of white adoption as part of violent colonial assimilation is invoked to show that simpson's experience of violence within adoption is not unique, but has been happening to multiple generations of Native mothers.when I was a child you took me from my mother, you said she didn't know how to be one, you stole her mother & her mother's mother before her, gave us to white women wolves & got mad at us for having teeth & sharp bones. (14–15)Simpson's own fracturalizing experience hits hard through assonance, alliteration, and strong yet accessible metaphor. There are many moments that feel almost too personal, like standing on the edge of a cliff to an unsayable moment. The poem “her. Ii” is one that left me wondering and also heartbroken. Many of the spaces and chosen words in the poem serve multiple interpretations, as most intriguing writing does. Therefore, this text would be useful in creating a space for analysis and creating conversations in the classroom about any of its intersecting topics. There is something here that most scholars, students, and general readers would find human and also important. Additionally, because of the deft poetic skill employed within the carefully structured poems themselves, this collection could also be an excellent tool for teaching poetics.Simpson's memoir does not just illustrate concepts—it forces the reader to feel them. It also works as a salve on the wounds described in their text, mirroring simpson's own efforts in healing and leaving space for painful memory. This poetry book should be high on anyone's list. The rhythms and poetic devices are edited masterfully, and the cuts you will get from reading are incisive and brutal. The imagery within it was never going to be okay is frequently elemental to the body and deals with bone, teeth, and skeleton. The ongoing violence of colonization, written and embodied by simpson's experience of targeted embodiment, is not only metaphorically portrayed within the poems—it hurts. The writer gets down to their core to extricate the demons of their and their family's experiences through this written exorcism, and readers may be liberated or necessarily hurt in the process, transformed through this experience of sharing fractures and fragments of memories.Because of its emotional and spiritual depth, it was never going to be okay offers an almost ceremonial reading experience. The form changes throughout the stories and often reflects their described and implied experiences of internalized fracturalization. Simpson is able to heal through reconnection to community and land in ways that seem unreachable earlier, while also showing that true healing is never a straight line.Through reclaiming their own worth as a two-spirit Oji-Cree member of the Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nations, simpson transforms from broken glass to soft-edged sea glass in the opening poem “sea glass.” No words are wasted in telling this story. As an academic writer who gets their writing inspiration from reading and listening to poetry, I am excited to say that it was never going to be okay is a phenomenal text that may inform your work as well as your humanity. I will be using this powerful collection in my academic writing and teaching as well as in my organizing; simpson so clearly exposes the lived experience that academics and organizers should be listening carefully to. It is my belief after reading this stunning collection that simpson's text can not only aid in understanding the consequences of settler colonialism but also help inform the next group of activists and scholars who are researching the Canadian settler colonial case especially. Further, this collection illustrates the importance and successes of culturally competent therapies and pathways of reconnection that may create hope for folks reconnecting to their lineages and working through trauma.

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