This Accident of Being Lost

Songs and Stories

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:House of Anansi Press Ltd ,Canada

Published:27th Apr '17

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This Accident of Being Lost cover

A knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization.

This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love.

A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting “ARE THEY GETTING IT?”; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, This Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.

A stunning collection of poetry, song, and short fiction. These short pieces are darkly humorous, elegantly constructed, and beautifully sorrowful . . . The stories are not bleak, and a wry sense of humor glimmers throughout, walking hand in hand with damaged humanity to create a gentleness that combats the sometimes grim subject matter . . . This is a truly creative and heartfelt work, thoroughly modern in tone and timbre. * Publisher's Weekly *
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a poet who strides through multiple realms. In This Accident of Being Lost, she carries the reader along with her urgent, direct address . . . It is the uneasiness and emotional uncertainty of her characters that makes the book strangely addictive. I was stunned by Simpson’s generosity in sharing these experiences and inviting us to be challenged and to be lost. I welcomed having my assumptions about urban Indigenous people upended, and this is accomplished with the nourishing humour, wisdom, and poetic, loose-limbed lines that have been sewn through the stories. * Globe and Mail *
A testament to the power of connection, This Accident of Being Lost is by turns poignant, funny, fiercely angry and deeply sad . . . remarkable. * Toronto Star *

  • Runner-up for Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2017 (Canada)
  • Runner-up for Trillium Book Award 2017
  • Commended for National Post 99 Best Books of the Year 2017
  • Commended for A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book 2017

ISBN: 9781487001278

Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 13mm

Weight: 181g

152 pages