Tomson Highway's memoir, Permanent Astonishment, is written as 'a symphony to life'
CBC News |Books | October 07, 2021
Categories: news
Tomson Highway's memoir, Permanent Astonishment, is written as 'a symphony to life'
When Tomson Highway says he was born in a snowbank, he means it literally. He arrived in December 1951, ahead of schedule, forcing his parents to stop their dogsled, pitch a tent in a snowbank in northern Manitoba and send their 12-year-old daughter out to fetch a midwife in the night.
Canadians know Highway as a world-renowned composer, pianist, playwright and author of the novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. He chronicles the first 15 years of his life in the memoir Permanent Astonishment, which isa finalist for the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Highway was the 11th of 12 children to come out of the remarkable marriage of Joe and Balazee Highway. Joe was a world champion dogsled racer and a celebrated caribou hunter. The Highway family were nomads, traversing Canada's great northern landscape by dogsled and living off the land.
Highway is fluent in multiple languages, but his mother tongue is Cree. He describes it as "a laughing language" capable of providing the "most pleasurable sensations." Highway started learning English and piano at a residential school, which he attended for nine years before deciding to enrol in high school in Winnipeg.
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