The Reason You Walk The Reason You Walk

The Reason You Walk

A Memoir

    • 4.0 • 1 Rating
    • $13.99
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

A moving story of father-son reconciliation told by a charismatic aboriginal star

When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who’d raised him. The Reason You Walk spans that 2012 year, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future.  As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. 

An intriguing doubleness marks The Reason You Walk, itself a reference to an Anishinaabe ceremonial song.  Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief and an urban activist. His father, Tobasonakwut, was both a beloved traditional chief and a respected elected leader who engaged directly with Ottawa. Internally divided, his father embraced both traditional native religion and Catholicism, the religion that was inculcated into him at the residential school where he was physically and sexually abused. In a grand gesture of reconciliation, Kinew's father invited the Roman Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to a Sundance ceremony in which he adopted him as his brother. 

Kinew writes affectingly of his own struggles in his twenties to find the right path, eventually giving up a self-destructive lifestyle to passionately pursue music and martial arts. From his unique vantage point, he offers an inside view of what it means to be an educated aboriginal living in a country that is just beginning to wake up to its aboriginal history and living presence. 

Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and for a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
RELEASED
2015
September 29
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
288
Pages
PUBLISHER
Penguin Canada
SELLER
PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.
SIZE
2.1
MB

More Books Like This

Singing Magic: Memoir of a Girl Who Thought Singing Was Life Singing Magic: Memoir of a Girl Who Thought Singing Was Life
2015
Untouchables Untouchables
2005
Colors of the Mountain Colors of the Mountain
2000
Bruchko Bruchko
2006
I Left It on the Mountain I Left It on the Mountain
2015
Heart of a Lioness Heart of a Lioness
2014

More Books by Wab Kinew

Go Show the World Go Show the World
2018
Walking in Two Worlds Walking in Two Worlds
2021
An Anishinaabe Christmas An Anishinaabe Christmas
2024
Un pied dans chaque monde Un pied dans chaque monde
2023
The Everlasting Road The Everlasting Road
2023
La force de marcher La force de marcher
2017

Customers Also Bought

In My Own Moccasins In My Own Moccasins
2019
They Called Me Number One They Called Me Number One
2012
Seven Fallen Feathers Seven Fallen Feathers
2017
Scarborough Scarborough
2017
We Have Always Been Here We Have Always Been Here
2019
The Break The Break
2016