Listen here:
Turning away from Shakespeare’s original and towards our summer production, Ruff Reads delves into a book that has had great influence on playwright PJ Prudat and Otîhêw, her Indigenous, fur trade-era reimagining of Othello.
Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 by Sylvia Van Kirk
Thursday June 30th at 8pm on Zoom
**The discussion will be led by Otîhêw playwright PJ Prudat.**
DM us or contact ruffreads@shakespeareintheruff.com for the Zoom link. (Don’t have time to read the book but still interested in the conversation? Join us anyway!)
Many Tender Ties is available at Queen Books (10% off with the code RUFFREADS) and the Toronto Public Library.
From the Publisher:
“Sexual encounters between [Indigenous] women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature. This illuminating book reveals instead that [Indigenous]-white marriages, sanctioned ‘after the custom of the country’, resulted in many warm and enduring family unions. These were profoundly altered by the coming of white women in the 1820s and 1830s.”
Sylvia Van Kirk got her PhD from the University of London, England. She is a professor emerita of Canadian History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto.