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Book review of the novel The Break by Katherena Vermette...

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1 Sociology 203.3 (02) March 5, 2019 Sexual Assault in The Break: A Book Review The novel, The Break, written by Katherena Vermette is about Indigenous individuals struggling to survive in a community of crime and poverty. Kartherena Vermette is a Metis woman who wrote this novel to highlight the struggle of what Indigenous people experience through many different lenses and aspects of everyday life. Many non-Indigenous Canadians do not understand or can even comprehend the struggle of Aboriginal people or the hardships they encounter daily. Previously in writing history, other authors writing about Indigenous people would not mention or talk about rape or sexual abuse and a lot of many other writers know that this is a sensitive subject with some people. Sexual assault is a main theme in this novel which can differentiate it from other works of this genre. There are many Indigenous characters represented throughout the novel that all tell a story about an incident from their perspective. This book review will review the perspectives of Emily, Phoenix, and Tommy. These three characters are all directly connected to the sexual assault incident and have thoughts and roles on what occurred. Emily is the victim in the sexual assault incident and readers view what she is like before, after, and during the event. Phoenix is the one being charged as the assaulter and is referred to as the “ringleader” (323). Tommy is the Metis policeman in charge of the case and is attempting to solve the problem. Though this novel is a work of fiction, The Break, shows the struggle of what Indigenous people experience in a colonized community in today’s society and shows the discrimination and hardships Aboriginal people experience on a daily basis. The Break is a fictional novel written by Katherena Vermette that follows various Indigenous individuals connected to a violent sexual assault event that occurred outside in a field

2 of land called The Break. Emily is the young girl who was assaulted by an older girl on a dark winter night. Her perspective is what happened the night she was raped and the thoughts and feeling she experienced during the incident. Emily is a 13-year-old girl who lives with her mother, Paulina, and a man her mother met a couple of years ago called Sniffer (21). She grew up with a single mother who has had multiple boyfriends, but overall had a good and stable upbringing and childhood. Unlike most Indigenous people her age, she did not know anything about the gangs and violence in her community which ultimately led her to her assault. She has never kissed a boy and has had a huge crush on Clayton Spence, a boy who is in her class (17). Emily runs into Clayton on the street on day and he invites her to a party, being hosted by the Bishop. Emily, having a huge crush on Clayton, cannot resist the invite and convinces her best friend Ziggy to go along with her. When the pair arrive to the party, Ziggy immediately recognizes it as being a gangster party because of all the information her brother tells her, but Emily is too innocent to identify all the clues that point toward this being a dangerous party. As soon as the duo walk through the door, they are offered drinks and marijuana from Clayton and Emily proceeds to get high and drunk. She gets very close and flirty with Clayton when Phoenix arrives to the party and immediately spots Clayton and Emily flirting with each other. She gets very angry at this sight since she and Clayton used to sleep together and have romantic relations with each other. Phoenix attacks Emily and Emily can do nothing but cry and take the beating since she is tremendously weaker than the older girl. Ziggy and Emily attempt to run away when Ziggy is caught and beaten up by the other members in Phoenix’s group. Emily temporarily escapes but is caught and cornered in The Break. Phoenix is beyond furious and is very unstable, so she proceeds to tell her group members to hold and pin Emily’s arms and legs down to the snow. Phoenix takes a beer bottle and rapes Emily with the object until she notices lights turning

3 on in a nearby house. She breaks the bottle inside of Emily’s vagina and runs away. Emily is taken to the hospital after being found by Sniffer, bleeding and unconscious on the stairwell of her house. Paul’s family arrives to the hospital and are immediately skeptical of Paul’s boyfriend as being the instigator of the assault. Fortunately, he is seen as not guilty as Phoenix’s group member snitch on her and inform the police what really happened. For the rest of Emily’s life, she will remember this incident and it will be a hard life of trust and hurt for this young girl. Emily says that everything is different now and this assault has forced her to grow up and mature in a lot of unhealthy ways. She says that she “has been hurt but is healing” (303) which is the best route to recovery. Emily has a lot of intersectionality elements that can be applied to her situation which can cause discrimination and oppression in her life. She is a female and the gender is seen as lesser than the male counterpart and can make her very vulnerable during dangerous situations, like the party. Women are seen as the weaker gender and can be easily beaten up or taken advantage of, which is what Phoenix did. Emily is also Indigenous which means that her people have been discriminated against by others, whether it be other Indigenous people or other cultures, for a long time. Settler colonist history is hard to overcome for many Indigenous people and many families are still affected by what their ancestors experienced. Aboriginal people are seen as “the other” in Canada and are treated very poorly and terribly by the other main ethnic groups. Though all her friends are Indigenous people, she still gets discriminated against by people of Aboriginal descent. Everyone is only looking out for themselves and these children need to stick up for themselves because nobody has their back. Emily’s class is lower middle class because her mother works as a medical assistant and she has grown up without knowing about the gangs and violence in her city. She is at a large disadvantage because she does not know about gangs and it ultimately comes back and hurts her.

4 These intersectionality’s are how Emily is oppressed during the course of the novel and how she ultimately puts herself into unwanted and life changing danger. Phoenix is a young girl who assaults Emily with a glass beer bottle in The Break. Phoenix’s chapter open up with her entering her uncle’s house and finding it in a bad condition with many rough girls lounging inside. There are cigarettes everywhere and the kitchen is a mess which she attempted to clean it, but not well. As the chapter unfolds, it is revealed to readers that she escaped juvenile detention that day and has come to her uncle’s house as a temporary place to stay. She was in juvey for unrevealed illegal reasons and is known to be impulsive and irresponsible. After being at her uncles for a while, she plans to check up on her “friends” and see what they are doing that night. They were going to attend a gang party hosted by Phoenix’s uncle and Clayton was going to be there. She gets all dressed up and does her makeup for the party. When she arrives, she immediately notices Clayton and another girl, Emily, flirting and getting really close to each other. She gets furious and starts yelling and chasing after Emily. Emily and her friend run outside where they separate, and Phoenix and her group chases and catches up with Emily at the break. Phoenix orders her group members to pin Emily down and Phoenix takes a beer bottle and starts raping Emily with the foreign object. She does not stop until she notices a light turning on in the distance and flees. She tries to forget about the night and asks her uncle to help and all they can do is hope that the police will not find them. A couple days later, the police find Phoenix at her uncle’s house and arrest her for sexual assault. At the prison, readers find out that she is pregnant with Clayton’s child and she is going to be labeled a sexual predator for the rest of her life. Phoenix is a person of many intersectionality’s and many have a negative influence on her life. She was first conceived at a party where her mother was raped at and had to grow up with a single mother. She has never had a father figure in her life

5 and no one to guide her down the right path and toward a positive future. Because of this, she turns to crime and does not understand the severe consequences of her actions. Phoenix is a young Indigenous girl and she is also a pregnant teen, which makes her more oppressed than the average Indigenous girl. She struggles with her identity and does not have anyone to rely on, making her a confused and irresponsible young girl. Phoenix is the most marginalized character in this novel and lives up to it by sexual assaulting other girls and getting herself into illegal trouble. Tommy is a Metis policeman in charge of the sexual assault case and patrols around the city with his partner. He has a Caucasian alcoholic father and an Aboriginal mother from a reserve, and he identifies as being a part of the Metis community. He is married to a young Caucasian woman and he is a new policeman out on the job. He is the first responder to the incident that Stella witnessed behind her house and is wanting to explore more on the case. His partner is an older gentleman that does not want to investigate the assault case more than he should. He interviews many people and feels connected to the case because he is half Aboriginal and knows what it is like to be oppressed and not taken seriously by law enforcement, because of his alcoholic father. When he finds out that Phoenix has sexually assaulted another girl, he cannot believe in because usually girls are very sweet and would not be an instigator in such a violent crime act. He goes to his mother’s house with the problem and she convinces him that “women can rape too, and that rape is a power struggle” (298). He takes this into consideration and finally comes to the conclusion that Phoenix has committed the crime and arrests her the next day for sexual assault. Tommy is a man with few intersectionality’s because he is conflicted with not being bias against Caucasians and Aboriginal people since he is a mix of both people. He is recognizable as Metis and his partner calls him out on it very often, like it is a

6 representation of stereotypes just for being a certain color. He is not determined by his skin color yet many people in the community assume he should act a certain way because of it. He is a man, so he is known to be very powerful and act in a masculine way. Since he is a policeman, he has to be very careful and strategic in how he acts because police individuals have been in the news for being very racist and discriminatory against individuals in society. Finally, Tommy is not very oppressed in this novel and is only discriminated against for his color and upbringing. All three characters mentioned in the essay are all oppressed through different aspects of their individual personalities and physical appearances. Emily is a privileged Indigenous young lady who has the privilege of growing up with a father figure and a mother with a very good job. She has a great friend group and has never put herself into any physical danger. Phoenix is a trouble young Indigenous woman who has imprisonment in her future and is destined to be a teenage mother. She does not have anyone she can count on in her life and is getting through everything on her own. Tommy is a Metis individual who works as a police man and is challenged with being an Indigenous individual working with both Aboriginal and Caucasian people and trying to stay unbiased towards both groups. The importance of this novel is to show how oppressed Indigenous people can be and how troubling life is in impoverished places. Many Canadian individuals do not know how difficult life on the reserve is and how terrible the crime is because many Indigenous people do not have access to resources a privileged Canadian would have. Because of the poverty and the crime that exists in many Indigenous communities, the schools and education is not always the greatest which leads to future criminals and drug addicts. It is hard to escape the cycle of poverty and that is what Vermette is attempting to illustrate in her novel and to get more Canadians informed about this terrible occurrence and everyday event happening in today’s society.

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Work Cited Vermette, Katherena. The Break. Anansi, 2016....