Resurgence And Identity In Red Rooms By Winona Stevenson

Resurgence and Identity
Firstly, red rooms can be described as a collection of short stories that are stitched together with the connection of the narrator. This essay will later explain how the structure of the book is an act of resurgence, however for the time being the book is a collection of short stories. To continue, narrator Naomi is also plagued by the issue of identity and what that means to them which links them with the characters she imagines. In the reader's first glimpse of the narrator, Naomi reveals that she is the “token Indian” of the hotel staff which means that they have to explain behaviour and history to people without indigenous heritage whenever there are gatherings of Native communities. (Dimaline, 4). This sets an underlying reality that indigenous people living in urban areas need acts of indigenous resurgence …show more content…
In Red Rooms the young woman in room 414, Constance in room 207 and Natalie in room 304 all must deal with the reality of being women and indigenous and what that means to them personally regarding their identity. Winona Stevenson exemplifies how colonialism negatively impacted Indigenous women in the past, writing that missionaries sought to eliminate Indigenous women’s autonomy, independence, family structures because Indigenous society was not run like the patriarchal European society. (Stevenson, 58-59). The goals of the past unquestionably have implications for the present and the future. From Stevenson's writings, one can see how Indigenous women’s identities would be negatively impacted when the European ideal of what a woman should be is enforced upon Indigenous women for generations. Meanwhile, Red Rooms attempts to reclaim parts of the three female protagonists’ Indigenous identity connected with their gender identity that was lost through colonization and subjected to racism, sexism,