Klee Wyck

by Emily Carr, Kathryn Bridge (Introduction)

Douglas & McIntyre is proud to announce definitive, completely redesigned editions of Emily Carr’s seven enduring classic books. These are beautifully crafted keepsake editions of the literary world of Emily Carr, each with an introduction by a distinguished Canadian writer or authority on Emily Carr and her work.

Emily Carr’s first book, published in 1941, was titled Klee Wyck ("Laughing One"), in honour of the name that the Native people of the west coast gave to her. This collection of twenty-one word sketches about Native people describes her visits and travels as she painted their totem poles and villages. Vital and direct, aware and poignant, it is as well regarded today as when it was first published in 1941 to instant and wide acclaim, winning the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction. In print ever since, it has been read and loved by several generations of Canadians, and has also been translated into French and Japanese.

Kathryn Bridge, who, as an archivist, has long been well acquainted with the work of Emily Carr, has written an absorbing introduction that places Klee Wyck and Emily Carr in historical and literary context and provides interesting new information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Classics, Art, Memoir, History, Short Stories

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer heavily inspired by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a post-impressionist painting style, Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until later in her life. As she matured, the subject matter of her painting shifted from aboriginal themes to landscapes, and, in particular, forest scenes. As a writer, Carr was one of the earliest chroniclers of life in British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a "Canadian icon".

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An astonishing little book written by the well-known iconic west coast artist, Emily Carr. At a time when settlers were doing their best to "civilize" the natives, Emily Carr travelled to abandoned villages to record images from totem poles. There seems to have been an abundance of abandoned villages, which unfortunately speaks to the waves of depopulation in the previous century.

Somehow it had escaped me that Emily Carr wrote! And indeed she wrote well. She peeled her sentences, aiming for simplicity and directness. Her artistry is apparent.

This book is a collection of anecdotes more than a structured work; but even so, it is resonant and coherent.

[Story · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Emily Carr's fantastic voyage through the beautiful, haunted landscape of Western Canada and her word-portraits of the resilient yet grieving indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

[Clarissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This little book took me completely by surprise and in no way did I expect to love and enjoy it as much as I did.

Emily Carr is known primarily in Canada as an artist whose paintings often come quickly to mind when one thinks of "Canadian Art", and yet her talent shines just as brightly in her written work. There's just this calming quality to her prose as she is able to perfectly encapsulate the beauty and wildness of the Canadian landscape making you feel transported to the West Coast.

I wouldn't call this a novel per say, rather it is a series of snapshots of Carr's interactions and experiences with Canadian First Nations. I'd never read anything on this topic, and like I said before, I wasn't expecting much from it at the beginning, but from the very first story was just immediately sucked in. She portrays these people with such sincerity focusing on them as individuals, not a collective. It was truly beautiful to read.

There's so much more I want to say about this text, but feel I'm just at a loss of words right now. The more and more I think about it the more ideas and revelations about it come to the surface. Ah this was just so great. The introduction and foreword of this edition were particularly fascinating and has made me want to read more of Carr's work, particularly her autobiography "Growing Pains". Emily Carr just sounds like a badass folks and I want to know more.

I highly enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone looking for a fine piece of Canadian Literature :)

[Shomeret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had considered reading The Forest Lover,which is a novel about Emily Carr by Susan Vreeland as my Canada book for Around The World in 52 books, but I'm glad I didn't settle for Emily Carr at second hand. She writes lovely prose.

Here is my favorite quote from this book:

"Down deep we all hug something. The great forest hugs its silence. The sea and the air hug the spilled cries of sea birds."

Emily Carr traveled to various Canadian First Peoples villages to sketch their totem poles and other carvings. I think she may be patronizing about their religion, but she has compassion for them as victims of persecution and tries to help them stand up for themselves. In one village where all Caucasians had been expelled, they welcomed Emily Carr.

There are illustrations of three of Emily Carr's paintings in this book. I particularly loved her painting of a mother and infant carving.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time hasn't been very kind to this work. It's honest in its appreciation of aboriginal culture on Canada's west coast, but it's sensibilities and its labels stretch across a spectrum that starts with naive, intersects with patronizing, and ends with distasteful. Its poetic language aside, it's a glimpse of an aboriginal population at its lowest ebb: beaten down by useless Indian agents, genocidal residential schools, racist government neglect, and extreme poverty. How much has actually changed in 70 plus years since Emily Carr took to writing her memoirs? Her art may be timeless, but this window into the past simply made for uncomfortable reading.

[Ginger Bensman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Emily Carr's paintings, her writing captures experiences of a particular time in a particular place with precision and honesty. And, although there are those who object to some of these essays on grounds of political correctness, or because of Carr's views about the ways the missionaries exploited Native Peoples, this is her story, the way she saw it. I, for one, loved seeing this world through her uncompromising eyes. The writing is often breath-taking. The stories these essays tell are haunting.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew she could paint, but I had no idea that Emily Carr could write like this. I might be developing a bit of a historical crush lol

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Klee Wyck by Emily Carr

"Sophie's kitchen was crammed with excited women. They had come to see Sophie's brand-new twins. Sophie was on a mattress beside the cookstove. The twin girls were in small basket papoose cradles, woven by Sophie herself. The babies were wrapped in cotton wool which made their dark little faces look darker; they were laced into their baskets and stuck up at the edge of Sophie's mattress beside the kitchen stove. Their brown wrinkled faces were like potatoes baked in their jackets, their hands no bigger than brown spiders.
They were thrilling, those very, very tiny babies. Everybody was excited over them. I sat down on the floor close to Sophie." Page 25

Emily Carr was a fascinating and very talented Canadian. She is generally considered Canada's most famous painter. She was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1871 and died there in 1945. She was renowned for her magnificent paintings and also for her extraordinary vivid and imaginative prose. She began writing late in life when she was forced by failing health to curtail her sketching activities.
Klee Wyck is Emily Carr's first book and it won a Governor General's award. Emily Carr was "Klee Wyck", "Laughing One," to the indigenous people of British Columbia. The pieces in this Canadian classic are based on her experiences going to remote areas and painting totems and villages. The stories are full of humour, pathos, and warm understanding.
While reading this book, Emily Carr painted pictures in my head - some were dark and scary, some were bold and brave, while others were happy and cheerful.
Here are a couple of quotes from the book:-

"The woman waded out holding the canoe and easing it about in the sand until it was afloat. Then she got in and clamped the child between her knees. Her paddle worked without noise among the waves. The wind filled the flour sack beautifully as if it had been a silk sail.
The canoe took the water as a beaver launches himself - with a silent scoot."


"The tips of the fresh young pines made circles of pale green from the wide base of each tree to the top. They looked like multitudes of little ladies in crinolines trooping down the bank. ".
5 stars

[Sage Oleander · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disjointed and at times it borders on fetishization. Carr capitalized on Indigenous trauma and while her paintings are highly regarded in terms of Canadian art, Klee Wyck is absolute swill.

It's also worth noting that the book has multiple instances of Emily Carr referring to Indigenous peoples as "[her] Indians", comparing them unfavourably to animals, even referring to two (likely Nisga'a) men as "monstrous" on one occasion. She chose not to denote which languages or dialect was being spoken, or simply did not care to learn. There is little differentiation between which bands/tribes she visits if any at all, a whole lot of romanticizing the notion of indigenous people as a dying race, and a weird amount of commentary on feet.

The inclusion of "Blouse" rubs me the wrong way. Mary's dying moments being overshadowed by an article of clothing, very little time spent explaining or describing what was going on. Who is Mary? Was this the woman who washed her family's clothes or some other indigenous woman by the same name? Why did Carr feel the need to include herself giving the literal shirt off her back to an indigenous woman and what were her motives behind writing this in? In addition to this I feel the need to question how much of this truly happened and how much of it is from the fading memories and creative mind of a 70 year old stroke survivor.

I didn't like Emily Carr before and this memoir didn't do her any favours. Sure, it was a different time when cultural genocide was law and racism was the norm, but these things deserve to be questioned accordingly through a modern lens. Carr is praised in BC with little discussion on her misappropriation of indigenous cultures in art institutions. Perhaps she was ahead of her time in some ways, yes, but that does not absolve her of all wrongdoings. We should not blindly mythologize her as some sort of Canadian cultural icon when much of what she did was capitalizing on the trauma of the Haida, Lekwungen, Squamish, Nisga'a, Kwakwak'wakw people and many many more.

[Mehdi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the themes in this novel. However, not a single story stands out! I asked all my friends about a memorable moment or something unique and they all said the same thing.

"Every story was the same."

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Flat. Read the book initially, because it had Coast Salish art on the cover. & it was free in iBooks. If you want to learn about Native Americans please read books by Native Americans.

[nabeeela · Rating 4 out of 5]

upon finishing Klee Wyck, i feel confident enough to say that Carr’s writing is as gorgeous as her art pieces~~

she also gets plus points for mentioning her pets (exotic ones too) every few sentences.
she took her dogs on every journey and always looked out for them :')
the way she spoke of the villages she visited in bc reminded me of the villages in parchinar :D!!!


some nice quotes :)

“The whole difficulty seems to be getting the thoughts clear enough, making them stand still long enough to be fitted with words and paint. They are so elusive-like wild birds singing above your head, twittering close beside you, chortling in front of you, but gone the moment you put out a hand. If ever you do catch hold of a piece of a thought it breaks away leaving the piece in your hand just to aggravate you. If one only could encompass the whole, corral it, enclose it safe-but then maybe it would die, dwindle away because it could not go on growing. I don't think thoughts could stand still—the fringes of them would always be tangling into something just a little further on and that would draw it out and out. I guess that is just why it is so difficult to catch a complete idea—it's because everything is always on the move, always expanding.”

“I thought of [Emily] then, as did the children behind the hedge and as did most of her fellow citizens who thought of her at all, as an eccentric, middle-aged woman who kept an apartment house on Simcoe Street near Beacon Hill Park, who surrounded herself with numbers of pets birds, chipmunks, white rats and the favourite Woo and raised English sheep dogs in kennels in her large garden.”

“Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. Cased only in a box it is laid in a shallow grave. The earth welcomes the body—coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves swiftly—exulting over corruption.”

this book and i went on our first date February 14 and it’s safe to say that we will be seeing each other again <3!!

[Anne-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emily Carr is an artist who's always intrigued me. Growing up in British Columbia meant that I saw a lot of her works in museums or art prints everywhere. But I didn't know she'd been a writer until I was visiting Munro's Books and found these new editions of her works.

Klee Wyck is a memoir in short stories and quick sketches of her travels among First Nations communities (it's almost autofiction at times, the way it reads). Most of these communities had been abandoned/resettled and her guides from the new settlements would bring her back to sketch/paint/record their totem poles.

Her nature writing is fantastic - she's quite evocative with her sparse phrasing and really brings a sense of atmosphere and location. I could easily picture the forests, the ocean, the damp cold beaches.

For her time, she was - I gather - a somewhat positive voice for First Nations art and people (though limited activism). I felt conflicted though while reading because I know she would've still had biases and those biases are evident in some of her writing - even if she was much more critical of missionaries and treatment of First Nations Peoples than her peers. Much of her language is still reflective of the time with "Indian" being used frequently and use of pidgin for many of the Indigenous people featured. And yet she also was friends with Indigenous women (in these stories), and wrote them and their families for the complex humans they are.

I'm glad that the full, original version of this book is now in print and not the abridged version. Seeing her on-page critiques of the missionaries and the residential school system (however limited those scenes were) gave a better understanding of her as a person and the context in which she and others lived.

Overall, I do want to read more of her writing as she was quite skilled. But as with other books of that time period, I expect there will be outdated language/views.

[Karis Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up on Vancouver Island and enjoying a childhood in and around Victoria, it’s hard to not feel a kinship with Emily Carr. Her writing is simple and very direct, but her words are so carefully chosen to acutely articulate minute details and fleeting feelings. She did not suffer from wordiness, and Klee Wyck will stick in my head a long time because of it. These memoirs are powerful, beautiful, and often heart-wrenching, and encapsulate the Island’s Wild West Coast atmosphere so vividly. I will definitely read this again.

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should be ready for the introduction by Kathryn Bridge, which tells the tale of what happens when others "edit for publishing" a dead author's work and she can't prevent it.

I discovered Emily Carr's paintings and was delighted to learn she had written stories from her experiences. Loved that her two writing rules were to use the simplest words possible and get to the point as quickly as possible.

Her language is still evocative. "There was strength still in his back and his limbs but his teeth were all worn to the gums. The shock of hair that fell to his shoulders was grizzled. Life had sweetened the old man. He was luscious with time like the end berries of the strawberry season." Or this, "They led me to the farthest house in the village. It was cut off from the schoolhouse by space filled with desperate loneliness."

The story 'The Stare' is a masterpiece of under two pages and completely heart breaking.

[❀ Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Carr was truly a woman before her time. she was feisty, opinionated, independent and comfortable roughing it. She spent much time exploring indigenous lands in BC, painting the totem poles and ending up in some interesting situations as she travelled with her little dog.

Although much of the descriptions of indigenous people would not be used today, she made friends, listened, learned and celebrated the beauty of totem poles. Her writing brings the reader to the territory she describes and leaves the reader wanting more, needing to research more about her life and her art.

[Ashley Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed feelings on this one.

Originally I had bought this thinking it was a Canadian indigenous woman's memoir, only to learn Emily Carr was in fact a white woman who spent most of her life living closely to the indigenous peoples of British Columbia. Not to mention it was originally published in 1941 so some of the language was not the most comfortable to read.

It was a strange experience to read as sometimes it was so clear this was written by a white person, but yet Carr's true and deep appreciation for not only indigenous culture but its preservation is also very evident. There were plenty of criticisms against the "white man" and some deeply moving passages.

While I would have far preferred to read this same story from the lense of an indigenous woman, it's also difficult not to recognize in 1941 this was likely the only way indigenous stories could be told and published.

As for the book itself, Carr is a beautiful writer. Each short chapter reads as it's own anecdote that weaves a greater story together.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was OUTSTANDING. Carr is an immaculate writer, so clear and direct while also vivid and lyrical, just these perfect little stories of a fascinating time and place. They are so respectful* and interested in the Native experience, and challenge norms and don't shy away from showing the challenges of modernity dnd contact with settlers. Each page felt alive, and full, and satisfying.

*That said, she does write their dialogue offensively, with Ls for Rs; also, Japanese characters are called by a slur short form. I choose to rate the book highly despite this, as it seems very clear to me that despite this she held the people she met in the highest regard, and most importantly, the most human regard - they are real people with foibles and quirks and while the dialogue is unfortunate, I don't think my modern sensibility really deserves to be that activated.

I'll also note that this edition is apparently the first in 50 years to be the full text, as a version was made for schools and they took out everything negative about the missionaries, of course. Highly recommend seeking out this version - plus there is good introductory material.

[Cindy Buckshon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this little book. I must admit to ignorance—I did not know that Emily Carr was a writer as well as a visual artist until this book came into my life through a course a friend took. The stories are clearly written and very evocative. I lived several years on Vancouver Island so it was easy enough for my mind to apply the words Emily wrote to my imagination. Having seen much of Carr's artwork I was intrigued to read about how the subject matter she was inspired by was obtained. The relationship between the author/artist and the generous hosts she met on her travels was a beautiful one. I recommend this beautiful book to fans of Emily Carr, it is worth the short time it takes to read.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carr was a rare advocate for Indigenous people during her time, and documented the many injustices the people still face. But even though she tried to praise Indigenous communities, her words still lump the people together and apply damaging stereotypes. She also tells stories that weren't hers to tell. So, while I appreciate her scorn for the missionaries, she still speaks with the voice of a patronizing colonist.

[Caroline Morris]

I read this because it was free on the book app on my phone. I read it alongside an article called ‘Cultural Appropriations and Identificatory Practices in Emily Carr's "Indian Stories"’ which felt pretty essential. I loved her writing style and generally got a lot out of the experience. Also her art is undeniably stunning.

[LobsterQuadrille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Carr's writing style and her obvious love for the British Columbia land and its indigenous people are what really shine in Klee Wyck. Her prose is unpretentious but richly descriptive and full of life and energy. Her writings about the totem poles she sketched may be my favorites. They perfectly capture the eerie beauty of these carvings and their environment. These were my favorite stories from the collection:

-Ucluelet
-Tanoo
-Skedans
-Cumshewa
-Sophie
-D'Sonoqua
-Greenville
-Sleep
-Sailing to Yan
-Cha-atl
-Juice
-Friends
-Century Time
-Kitwancool

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fascinating and beautiful. I loved looking up her paintings that corresponded with the different chapters and seeing the similarities in how she described things verbally and portrayed them in her art. She certainly had a lot of respect for Indigenous folks and culture but I am definitely thinking a lot about the ethics of her travels.

[Ian Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting foray into not only Carr's experiences, but also the state of lesser known BC at the time. She writes thoughtfully enough to convey the weight of the adventures, but with a lightness and humour. Quick and enjoyable read.

[Laura]

Free download available at Faded Page.

[Brenna Jarrett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy this did not age well
It was fine, getting a glimpse into what a white person thought of native people back then, but wow there were some times that I cringed

[sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3,5)

[Hailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5** i would love to hear a canlit prof’s Take on this

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought this book had one good chapter. Just not for me.

[ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

i love reading books set in bc

this was good just not for me