James Bay Memoirs and Other Stories (Critical)

James Bay Memoirs and Other Stories brings together the poetry, stories, essays, and editorials of Eeyou writer Margaret Sam-Cromarty.

Born in 1936 on Fort George Island in Eeyou Istchee, Sam-Cromarty is the daughter of hunters and trappers, a residential school survivor, a mother and grandmother, and a poet and painter. In 1980, during the first phase of Hydro-Québec's James Bay project, she and the other residents of Fort George were forced to relocated to the newly created village of Chisasibi. This event informed much of her writing, in which she documented family and community life, and her experiences of the land both before and after the relocation.

Throughout the 1990s, Sam-Cromarty regularly contributed to the Cree magazine The Nation and published three books: James Bay Memoirs: A Cree Woman's Ode to her Homeland in 1992, Légendes et poèmes indiens / Indian Legends and Poems in 1996, and Contes et poèmes cris / Cree Poems and Stories in 2000. Gathered for the first time in this volume, and accompanied by a new interview with the author, as well as a contextualizing essay by editors Isabella Huberman and Élise Couture-Grondin, these writings are a testament to her role in keeping Eeyou culture and knowledge alive. Truthful, poignant, and playful, Margaret Sam-Cromarty's life's work is a remarkable contribution to Indigenous literatures in Québec and Canada.