From the Ashes

Abandoned to the foster system, taken in by grandparents then thrown out in highschool, Jesse Thistle ends up homeless and addicted on the streets of Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Spoiler - Jesse Thistle is currently an Assistant Professor in Métis Studies at York University in Toronto, a Governor General's Academic Medal winner, as well as a Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Vanier Scholar. Knowing this, knowing that he makes it out alive, adds some much needed air to this memoir because on the page there is no shortage of circumstances that sees this ending in a far more grim, frankly more dead, way.

The memoir benefits from his clear prose and sharp editing as we jump from scene to scene. The matter of fact tone avoids easy sentiment - it never feels like misery porn or the nostalgic showing of scars. Thistle is nonetheless ruthless in his recounting; from a night consumed by the rhythm of the ragga jungle high on E and dancing for days until his nipples were open wounds, rubbed raw against his muscle shirt as if on a belt sander - to detoxing in solitary, bones vibrating in agonizing pain, shattering his frame until he felt like a pile of bloody talcum powder.

I don't know why I'm a sucker for these breathless memoirs of youthful indiscretion and tragedy, it feels almost like a genre unto itself from Nico Walker's Cherry, to the troubled Million Little Pieces (both being made into movies) and I feel a bit like a salacious voyeur into another's troubled past. But I also appreciated Thistle's slight nods to his indigenous background that coloured the edges of this work and brings a tiny bit of magic into this redemptive arc.