Quotes

Time passed, I don't know how much, everything blurred and slid together, and I shook and felt like I was going to throw up.

Lisamarie, pg. 122

This sentence comes after Lisamarie witnesses a strange, flirtatious interaction between her mother and Uncle Mick. As a child, Lisa feels powerless to do anything in the moment. A loss of time is a common response to experiencing a trauma, however small. The flow of the language here evokes her sense of anxiety and heightened emotion that Lisa feels upon seeing something so unexpected.

"Honey," she said, "if you were some little white girl, that would be true. But you're a mouthy Indian, and everyone thinks we're born sluts. Those guys would have said you were asking for it and got off scot-free."

Aunt Trudy, pg. 255

Here, Lisa's Aunt Trudy points out the riskiness of Lisa's confrontation with the white boys in Terrace. Trudy is intending to give Lisa a dose of reality pertaining to the racial situation and the unfortunate history of Haisla girls being treated as less than human. The warrior-like Lisa, on the other hand, cannot understand the warnings of all the adults; she knows she was doing the right, just thing to fight back against potential assaulters, and can't fathom why she is receiving the blame rather than them.

I put my hands out and managed to scrape only my palms. Three boys about my age circled me on their bikes, laughing. One of them was Frank, who kept trying to run me over. I had to roll fast to keep out of his way. He was bigger than anybody in grade two, and if he decided he didn't like you, you were in trouble. pg. 64

Frank punched me in the face. It hurt so bad that my eyes swam in their sockets. I fell back, pulling him with me. We rolled together on the ground, and I made my hands into claws and raked his arms. pg. 65