Bestselling author Amanda Peters’ debut short story collection Waiting for the Long Night Moon weaves traditional storytelling with her elegant, sparse prose to convey the dignity of Indigenous ways of life, the harsh realities of systemic racism, and the resilient spirit that endures.
Spanning a vast range of times and places, the stories focus on situations that range from early encounters with European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children in the 1960s, to Indigenous communities’ ongoing struggle for clean water in the present day. A young man returns from residential school to find he can no longer communicate with his parents. An elderly man reflects on his life as he awaits death. A nervous young girl dances in her first Mawi’omi. And a young woman discovers purpose and healing as she fights for water rights. Peters’ stories are at times devastating and occasionally unsettling – but always absorbing. They remind us that where there is grief, there is also joy. And where there is trauma, there is resilience. And at the heart of it all, there is power.
It’s interesting to note that these stories were written before her multi award-winning debut novel The Berry Pickers. (Read Sesaya Arts’ interview with her here.) And as she acknowledges at the end of the collection, they came to her “from so many people, and were inspired by so many different things. Dreams, stories told to me, other books, family history. I think I just wrote about whatever was happening around me at the time!” she recalls. As an example, “when The Acadians and the Mi’kmaw came together in 2017 to celebrate their generations-long friendship, I was inspired to write about that friendship. So the collection has a short story that explores that, albeit in a fictional sense.” This sense of creative freedom sprang from initially writing the stories for herself, and not for others. As a result, she explains, “I just went with whatever inspiration grabbed me at the time.”
Peters’ dual heritage is a key influence on the themes and perspectives of her stories. “I think all writers are influenced by who they are, just as all readers interpret based on who they are. And I think that is beautiful,” she reflects. Peters’ father, who is Mi’kmaq, instilled in her a love for storytelling, while her mother, who is not Mi’kmaq, nurtured her love of the written word. This duality is reflected in the stories that she writes, where “the themes are predominantly Indigenous in nature. I didn’t intend on doing that when I started out writing, but these are the stories that came to me, and the stories that I love to tell.” Peters is quick to note that her future work may not focus on Indigenous themes, but for now, “those are the stories that are speaking to me”.
Given that the collection’s stories are grounded in both historical and present-day concerns, they touch directly on key issues of systemic racism, neglect, and trauma, while also celebrating love, joy, and resilience. And Peters speaks candidly about the emotional challenges of navigating this wide range of experiences in her work. “It’s so important when writing about the Indigenous experience in Canada to be careful that you don’t fall into the ‘trauma trap’ and focus solely on that,” she explains. “We are loving, funny, resilient people, and this needs also to be highlighted. We cannot ignore the injustices, but we can find joy.” Striving for such a balance, Peters ensures that her stories do not shy away from difficult truths, yet also uplift the strengths of Indigenous communities. One particularly harrowing story titled “3 Billion Heartbeats” kept her up at night, questioning whether it upset that balance due to its violent content. In the end, she chose to leave it in, and “let the reader decide if it was a good decision or not”.
The collection’s structure was carefully considered, in order to arrange the stories in a way that maintains both variety and interest. “I went back and forth with my editor, ensuring that thematically similar stories were separated so that the reader would not become bored,” she recalls. Likewise, shorter stories are interspersed among longer ones to create a rhythmic flow. And Peters intentionally begins and ends the collection with stories of personal significance. The opening story is the first piece she ever wrote that she felt proud of, and the final story, entitled “A Strong Seed”, is a celebration of love, family, tradition, and resilience, which closes the collection on what Peters describes as “a super powerful positive note.”
Peters’ thoughtful attention to craft is further evidenced by the title of the collection.The story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon” was awarded the Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose in 2021, so the publisher thought that should also be the title of the collection. As it happens, Peters was particularly fond of this title, too. And “it helps that the cover art is gorgeous. And as people like to point out to me, I have an affinity for the moon and its impact on our lives, so you will see it mentioned more than once throughout the collection. As someone who struggles with naming her characters and titling her stories, I really liked this one. I think it rolls off the tongue and stays with people,” she explains.
Though Peters downplays her ability to deploy traditional storytelling techniques in contemporary prose, her writing does capture evocatively the essence of oral storytelling passed down through generations. “Those are oral traditions,” she insists with humility, “and even when translating them to the page, there are folks out there doing a much better job than I am. shalan joudrey comes to mind.” On a personal, equally modest note, Peters explains how she loved a particular story that her aunt shared with her so much that she wanted to tell it in her voice. “So I tried, and I think it worked out okay.”
Waiting for the Long Night Moon is a collection that feels deeply personal yet is universally resonant, filled with stories that are both a gift to her readers and a responsibility that Peters has embraced with care. “I hope the readers enjoy the stories,” she says gently. “They were gifted to me, and I was given the responsibility to write them. So I now gift them to you to enjoy.”
Readers in Toronto can attend two events with Peters: “Solo Feature: Waiting for the Long Night Moon” at Word on the Street, Saturday September 28, 4:30-5:15 pm and “Narrative Wisdom: Dissecting the World with Short Stories” at the Toronto International Festival of Authors, September 29, 2:00 pm.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine, 2024
