Title & author
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Synopsis
The Berry Pickers brings to the forefront an issue not just overlooked and dismissed by individuals and politicians in the U.S.—MMIWG2S—but also the historical whitewashing of Indigenous identity. It’s a story of familial and cultural loss, preservation, and belief.
Who should read this book
Fans of The Vanishing Half and Sankofa
What we’re thinking about
The passing down of culture and identity
Trigger warning(s)
Abuse, substance abuse, racism, miscarriage, death of a parent (see more)
The Berry Pickers, a debut novel from Amanda Peters, tells the story of Ruthie, a young Mi’kmaq girl from Nova Scotia who is stolen by a white family and raised to believe she is their birth child (Catapult, 2023). Peters brings to the forefront an issue not just overlooked and dismissed by individuals and politicians in the U.S.—that issue being Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S) peoples—but also the historical whitewashing of Indigenous identity. It’s a story of familial and cultural loss, preservation, and unshaken belief.
Ruthie’s “mother,” or kidnapper, “had herself convinced that [Ruthie had] been abandoned and she’d saved [her]” (Peters, 268). She and her husband, who were unable to have children of their own, never assume Ruthie will discover the truth, dismissing any questions she has with explanations of genetics and falsified memories. “‘You’re confused,’” they tell her, over and over (25). They see Ruthie as better off with them, that they came along and rescued her from an inferior ancestry. And that same attitude—that an Indigenous child is somehow lesser—is echoed in the white police officers who fail Ruthie’s birth family: “‘There are only three of us police officers, and we had a break-in down at the farm supply store a couple weeks back,’” an officer tells the family when dismissing their request to help find their daughter (18).
Unlike the family she is raised to believe as her own, a family that erases Ruthie’s heritage in favor of whiteness, Ruthie’s birth family continues to engrain values of their Indigenous culture into their everyday lives, including learning to speak Mi’kmaq. “‘White folks been trying to take the Indian out of us for centuries…But now that you know, you gotta let people know…Gotta reclaim what was taken away’” (293-4).
While reading The Berry Pickers and watching the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli government, it’s hard not to notice the interconnected nature of their experiences against oppressive colonialist forces.* The unified fight for liberation shines strong, coming out clearly in Ruthie and her family’s history and present, and that of Palestinians made visible on social media. Their fight for safety, security, and visibility of humanity, along with their preservation of identity, all act as reminders that sovereignty and liberation are intertwined; for unless we all are free, nobody is free.
*While there are overlaps in the struggle for liberation and sovereignty, and in the fight against colonialist and imperialist powers, particularly between the Land Back and Free Palestine movements, these connections should not be made at the expense of erasure of individual experiences. Conflating the two as one and the same will undoubtedly overlook nuances that will prevent complete dismantlement of oppressive structures. Rather, we encourage individuals to consider the two movements as intertwined and in conversation.
“I am marvelling at how I’ve been shaped and moulded by women, even though I was absent from them most of my life.”
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