Flint & Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake

Charlotte Gray

ISBN 10: 0002000652 / ISBN 13: 9780002000659

Published by HarperFlamingo Canada, 2002

About this Item

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.75.

Seller Inventory # G0002000652I4N00

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Flint & Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake
• Publisher: HarperFlamingo Canada
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002000652
• ISBN 13: 9780002000659
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Illus. With Photos
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

In Flint & Feather, biographer Charlotte Gray tackles the extraordinary life and times of one of Canada's most colourful and enigmatic figures, E. Pauline Johnson (also known by her great-grandfather's Mohawk name, Tekahionwake). The daughter of a prim, British-born woman and a flamboyant Mohawk chief, Johnson spent her unusual and relatively privileged childhood in a mansion on the Six Nations Reserve in Upper Canada. As a young, unmarried woman, she relied on her writing to make a living, and her recitals became so popular that she spent decades criss-crossing the continent and the Atlantic, mesmerizing audiences with her Indian garb and poetry. Literary recognition came in her final years with the publication of Legends of Vancouver. Throughout her life, Johnson defied Victorian--and her mother s--notions of a woman s role and comportment in society; she challenged white prejudices about First Nations people through her poetry and performances; and she harmonized her own, often conflicted feelings about her dual cultural affiliations--in the process becoming an exemplar of racial coexistence.

Charlotte Gray brings her considerable biographical talent to bear on a worthy subject. As she goes through Johnson's life, year by year, liberally interspersing excerpts from poetry and letters along the way, she gives her readers a very real sense of the life that Johnson lived. Gray evokes the sensuousness of the places Johnson found herself in, rural and urban alike. She explores Johnson's complex, often strained family relationships. She delves into the mysteries surrounding the Indian princess, casting light on a few, putting forth the various theories on others, and speculating on what will forever remain unknowable, lost to the conflagration following her death to cancer. Gray also provides the crucial sociohistorical and political context: changing attitudes towards First Nations people and mixed marriages; the antislavery movement in the States; Victorian mores and attitudes toward women--in particular, women of the stage; the budding suffragette movement; allegiances formed with the First Nations people, and betrayed; and the importance of canoeing in the cultural life of the times, and for Johnson's own sense of well-being. Flint & Feather is not only a meticulously crafted work of scholarship, but a moving narrative that draws its readers in and propels them through Johnson's life with the same indomitable vivacity with which she lived it, right up to the end. --Diana Kuprel