{"id":23202,"date":"2025-01-09T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=23202"},"modified":"2025-01-08T15:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T14:50:20","slug":"aquariums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2025\/01\/09\/aquariums\/","title":{"rendered":"Aquariums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSince the dawn of time, these social, communicative, yet solitary creatures have been subjected to human presence: they were privy to our first steps in the water, the first strokes of our paddles, the first engines, the first bombs. They\u2019ve been there listening to the murderous follies we have let ourselves be swept up in, with no regard for them. Still, the coup de gr\u00e2ce wasn\u2019t our harpoon guns but our indifference.\u201d<\/em> (p. 117)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aquariums<\/em>, first published in French in 2019 by l\u2019instant m\u00eame, and in 2022 in Pablo Strauss’ English translation by dundurn, is the second novel of Innu writer J. D. Kurtness. Her own lived experiences as the daughter of an Innu father and a Quebecois mother, as well as her knowledge of the field inform this book\u2019s complicated, conflicted characters and storylines, inviting the world to consider the complexities of modern Indigeneity and offering English-speaking readers an entrance into the world of francophone Indigenous literature from Canda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an age where the Rights of Nature, the bestowment of legal personhood upon natural entities and more-than-human beings, is becoming increasingly more widespread, Kurtness\u2019s decision to include the perspectives of whales and dolphins is what makes this novel outstanding, going beyond the inclusion of Indigenous legal thought that is present in the Rights of Nature but allowing marine animals\u2019 experiences to be weaved into the human world. Along human characters, both Indigenous and settler, the whales, too, change their social structures amid their changing environment and growing number of threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kurtness does not halt at the inclusion of more-than-human lives but encompasses lives lived in pre-colonial times and brings us, generation by generation, onto a scientific vessel near the Arctic of a near future, characterized by a rapidly spreading virus and degraded environments. Through this, she imagines emotionally elaborate Indigenous life throughout centuries, parting ways with traditional genres and storylines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the book we follow \u00c9meraude from her early childhood into her days working as a scientist in a near, apocalyptic future \u2013 it is her life and that of the whales that give this book a steadiness that helps bind together the other, at first glance seemingly disconnected storylines, but they are not all that unsimilar. Like \u00c9meraude, most feel somewhat detached from their communities; \u00c9meraude herself, the descendent of all other human characters in the novel, seeks out outcasts and increasingly struggles to feel connected to those closest to her. With time, we experience the loss of loved ones through her eyes and understand her growing  desire to protect marine species who have brought her solace as well as companionship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aquariums<\/em> \u2013 sitting perfectly at the intersection between a family chronicle and a pandemic tale, interwoven with the disastrous progression of the climate catastrophe – offers both indecisive and openminded readers alike a bridge between historical fiction and science fiction. While the brevity of this novel does not allow for extensive world-building, Kurtness fantastically outlines the future, building on her education as a marine scientist to paint a picture of the lethal consequences of modern capitalism on oceanic life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers of Bernadine Evaristo\u2019s Girl, Woman, Other<\/a><\/em> or Yaa Gyasi\u2019s Homegoing<\/em> are likely to enjoy the intergenerational threads that bind Aquariums <\/em>into the book it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aquariums \u2013 sitting perfectly at the intersection between a family chronicle and a pandemic tale, interwoven with the disastrous progression of the climate catastrophe – offers both indecisive and openminded readers alike a bridge between historical fiction and science fiction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":23199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2444,103],"tags":[2786,2306,928,2302,2506,833,2790,2787,2770,1189,2789,2791],"class_list":["post-23202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poco_lit_space-en","category-review","tag-aquariums","tag-being-from","tag-canada","tag-first-nations","tag-indigeneity","tag-indigenous-literature","tag-innu-writer","tag-j-d-kurtness","tag-kanada-en","tag-novel-2","tag-pablo-strauss","tag-rights-of-nature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23203,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23202\/revisions\/23203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}