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ISBN: 9781487011239

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Laughing with the Trickster

On Sex, Death, and Accordions

Trickster is zany, ridiculous. The ultimate, over-the-top, madcap lunatic. Here to remind us that the reason for existence is to have one blast of a time and to laugh ourselves to death. Celebrated author and playwright Tomson Highway brings his signature irreverence to an exploration of five themes central to the human condition: language, creation, sex and gender, humour, and death. A comparative analysis of Christian, classical, and Cree mythologies reveals their contributions to Western thought, life, and culture—and how North American Indigenous mythologies provide unique, timeless solutions to our modern problems. Highway also offers generous personal anecdotes, including accounts of his beloved accordion-playing, caribou-hunting father, and plentiful Trickster stories as curatives for the all-out unhappiness caused by today’s patriarchal, colonial systems.

Contributors

Tomson Highway

Tomson Highway is a Cree author, playwright, and musician. His memoir, Permanent Astonishment, won the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He also wrote the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and the bestselling novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. He is a member of the Barren Lands First Nation and lives in Gatineau, Quebec.

Chapter Contributors Pages Year Price
In this chapter, Highway examines the Cree language as a cornerstone of Canadian cultural and linguistic identity.
12 $1.20
In this chapter, Highway compares three creation traditions—Christian, Greek, and North American Indigenous—through a Cree framework of truth, fiction, and the liminal space between.
20 $2.00
In this chapter, Highway examines the Trickster figure in Cree and broader Indigenous storytelling, revealing how humour threads through language, creation narratives, and cultural survival.
20 $2.00
In this chapter, Highway examines sexuality, gender roles, and domestic violence in the Cree-Dene village of Brochet, northern Manitoba, during the mid-twentieth century.
22 $2.20
In this chapter, Highway examines three cultural visions of death—the Catholic afterlife, the Greek Underworld, and the Cree understanding of rebirth.
17 $1.70
This chapter provides a practical phonetic guide to the Cree language, drawn from a broader work on Indigenous languages in the Americas.
2 $0.20
This "chapter" is a reading list and notes.
6 $0.60