Tagaq: Part of me that's connected to the land is completely unsurprised at the way things are going, this ridiculous, fever dream that humans have created out of the economy. Justice must be served there is still time.- We live in tumultuous times for any number of reasons, but can you talk about how you see the future? Once you get silly with someone, it's very easy to work with them.Ĭonvict and punish the living perpetrators that abused and murdered children in residential schools. There were a few nights where we were just cry-laughing. Saul Williams pointed me in the right direction. But with the release of Split Tooth, and the recording of the audiobook, I thought it'd be a real shame not to marry these two. But I have to give him a lot of credit because I was taking baby steps into language, having never incorporated a lot of comprehensible lyrics into my work. Tagaq: I have an excellent record company and they went: 'Who's your dream person ?' I threw it out there almost as a joke, this probably won't happen. What follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.ĬP: Using your book Split Tooth as the groundwork for Tongues was a twist, but having Saul Williams help shape the album was a bigger surprise. While on a getaway in Simcoe County in Ontario, Tagaq spoke to The Canadian Press about her album, finding her voice online, and Canada's shameful record on residential school atrocities. Tanya Tagaq melds memoir and fiction with emotional first book, Split Tooth.Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget. Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust.

She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love.

In the end, there may be no difference between them.Ī girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous.

Tanya tagaq book