Imagen del autor

Dawn Dumont

Autor de Nobody Cries at Bingo

4 Obras 140 Miembros 6 Reseñas

Obras de Dawn Dumont

Nobody Cries at Bingo (2018) 66 copias
Glass Beads (2017) 36 copias
Rose's Run (2014) 26 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Nombre legal
Walker, Dawn Marie
Género
female
Nacionalidad
Canada
Lugar de nacimiento
Saskatchewan, Canada
Ocupaciones
actor
comedian
author

Miembros

Reseñas

Dawn Dumont has been in the news lately but not because of her writing. She kidnapped her son, faked her death and fled to the United States. She was arrested in Oregon and has now been returned to Saskatchewan to face trial. She says she did this to escape an abusive partner. Interestingly abuse plays a part in this book but the person that was the victim didn't have to resort to using false names or fleeing the country. I'll keep an open mind (as everyone should do) but I do wonder how traumatized her child must have been.

Three young people from a Saskatchewan reserve end up in Saskatoon. Nellie, Julie and Everett meet Taz who is from a northern reserve. There's a lot of drinking and partying while the four figure out their roles in life.Nellie has always been attracted to Everett but he plays the field including with Julie. Taz has dreams of being the Grand Chief and Nellie has the intelligence and organizational skills to make that happen. But Taz ends up with Julie and eventually Nellie and Everett settle down when Nellie has a baby. Julie left Taz and Saskatoon for a while to work in northern Alberta. We eventually find out that Julie had been pregnant and lost the baby after Taz hit her. When they get back together they try hard to have another baby but nothing seems to work. Until it does but maybe Everett had a role to play in Julie getting pregnant. Regardless when Taz repeats his violence Julie leaves him and moves in with Everett and Nellie. And then Nellie decides to run for Grand Chief against Taz and Everett has a showdown with Taz. So at the end, as in the beginning, the three from the one reserve are supporting each other.

This book is written as a series of interconnected short stories so there are abrupt changes of scene and jumps in time that can be a little jarring. Nevertheless because of the excellent writing and characterization this is a book that sticks with the reader long after the actual reading is finished.
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Denunciada
gypsysmom | 2 reseñas más. | Sep 8, 2022 |
That was sweet and hilarious and relatable. Dumont's got a strong voice, and I'll definitely be reading more of her work.
 
Denunciada
LibroLindsay | 2 reseñas más. | Jun 18, 2021 |
"Nobody Cries At Bingo" is a memoir of Dawn Dumont's life from early childhood through to her early years in college. It's not an "I was born on a dark and stormy night" kind of read that goes from conception to emancipation in an order driven only by the logic of the calendar. It's much more interesting than that.

It's a series of episodes from Dawn's life, each one completely immersive and self-explanatory but which together build up layers of memory of people and events and relationships that better reflect how we remember our lives than any do-it-by-the-timeline history.

Dawn Dumont grew up in the Okanese First Nation in southern Saskatchewan. The life she is describing is far away from my own upbringing in an Irish-Catholic community in the NorthWest of England yet Dawn Dumont bridges that gap, showing me how similar large families from minority communities can be. She also shows me how unique her way of life and the history of her people is.

The thing that shone through all the episodes Dawn Dumont describes is that she grew up in a family where she knew she was loved and where people looked after one another. This isn't something she says directly. At a first glance, the sometimes nomadic life adopted by her mother in the face of her father's alcoholism, the racism in the school she attends, the stories of kids running wild in packs could be seen as a cry for intervention but that would be a fundamental misunderstanding. The starting point here is love. Love allows freedom, offers forgiveness and never walks away for good. That changes the context of the all the behaviour. It doesn't make it perfect, just different.

Dawn Dumont is a stand-up comic as well as an author and she describes incidents from her life in ways that made me want to smile even when they also made me want to cry. The nature of Dawn Dumont's humour is emblematic of the way of life she is describing: it is optimistic, unaggressive and deeply insightful. Dawn doesn't use sarcasm or get laughs by playing on or against stereotypes. She laughs at herself and her responses as much as she laughs at those who try to do her harm or those who are just part of the constant chaos that she takes for granted. This is a humour that makes you laugh because laughter keeps you human.

I was completely ignorant of First Nation history in Canada. I hadn't realised that the same attempts at cultural annihilation where made there as in the US. I've been to the Navaho and the Hopi and Pueblo people's and heard their stories. Naively, I had expected better of Canada. Dawn Dumont makes tackles the history of her people in a matter of fact way that does not dismiss or minimise what was done to her parents and her grandparents or what continues to happen today, but which seems to say: "It happened. It was crap. But we're still here." I admire the strength of that.

"Nobody Cries At Bingo" is a personal narrative, not the history of a nation. Dawn rolls our her life and lets us look at it and smile at her remembered self. It's inclusive and funny and feels honest and intimate.

I wasn't able to find an audiobook version of "Nobody Cries At Bingo", which surprised me as Dawn Dumont is a narrator and her text would be perfect as an audiobook.

If you're looking to get a gentle, funny, honest look at a girl's remembered childhood, this is the book for you. Along the way, you may learn a thing or two about what it means to be Native in modern Canada.

Dawn Dumont's latest book "Rose's Run" is now in my TBR pile ( yet again only in ebook - doesn't anyone want to do First Nation audiobooks?).
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Denunciada
MikeFinnFiction | 2 reseñas más. | May 16, 2020 |
This is a progression of stories that form what is essentially a novel about four First Nations young people who are leaving the reservation for the first time. They discover how difficult life is for aboriginal youth as they attempt to get an education and earn a living in a world of white people. These stories could only be told by someone who has been in the position and faced the same cultural difficulties. Although their histories are marked by racism, alcohol, assault, and crime, the four share the same worries as any other young person concerned about looking their best, getting good marks, making friends, yet at no time do we forget that their fears come from a different place, a different culture. But these stories are not about being indigenous, but about four young people becoming adults, albeit in a world where they are in a minority group. Dumont's tempting book spans a couple of decades around the turn of the century. Enlightening and thought-provoking.

The author is a Plains Cree writer for newspapers in Saskatchewan and Alberta, for CBC radio, as well as working as a stand-up comedian across North America.
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Denunciada
VivienneR | 2 reseñas más. | Aug 24, 2019 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
4
Miembros
140
Popularidad
#146,473
Valoración
4.0
Reseñas
6
ISBNs
20
Idiomas
1

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