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Review Of Natasha Donovan's Surviving The City

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Surviving the City, written by Tasha Spillett and illustrated by Natasha Donovan, is a powerful graphic novel that delves into the deep realities of Indigenous life in Winnipeg, Canada, particularly focusing on the experiences of Indigenous women. It is closely linked to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit (MMIQWG2S) movement and tells the story of two Indigenous teenage girls, Dez and Miikwan. Dez’s grandmother falls sick, so she runs away to avoid being placed in foster care, while Miikwan struggles with the pain of her missing mother. Throughout the novel, Spillett and Donovan use evocative imagery and rich storytelling to offer a saddening examination of themes such as resilience, identity, and the impact of …show more content…

In several scenarios, men pose frightening questions and comments to the young women, such as "Hey girl! Get in on the fun! I'll give you a ride wherever you wanna go" to Miikwan when she was waiting for her bus to arrive (p. 47). This expresses to me the abuse and struggles the community goes through every day. It is incredibly tragic and wrong that Miikwan's first thought upon Dez's disappearance was that she was abducted or killed primarily due to her Indigenous identity, an effect of the trauma given to the Indigenous community. Dez deals with colonialism and racism through her situation at home as her grandmother (Kokum), who is also her caretaker, gets sick and is unable to care for her. She is threatened with being taken from her home by an insensitive social worker, drawing comparisons to the residential school system and historical human rights abuses. Page 26, which is depicted in Figure 3, strikes me as especially powerful because it shows Dez's grandmother being taken away by a man and a dark shadow and being sent to residential schools, while Dez is talking to her friend Miikwan about her fears of being placed in a group home (p.

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