Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter (Carleton Library Series, 265)

by Laura Goodman Salverson, Carl Watts (Introduction)

Born in Winnipeg to Icelandic immigrants in 1890, Laura Goodman Salverson embarked on a life marked by contradiction and cultural exchange. Her 1939 memoir braids the strands of her parents’ intellectual life in Iceland with a hardscrabble existence on the Prairies at the turn of the century, all against a backdrop of European settlement in post-Riel Manitoba and in colourful, self-assured prose. Leaving behind economic hardship, a difficult climate, and the threat of volcanoes, Lars Gudman was in search of stability for his family, but he was also ensnared by wanderlust. Travelling onward to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Selkirk, Duluth, and the Mississippi Valley, Salverson and her parents returned time and again to the Icelandic enclave in Winnipeg, a community struggling to adjust to life in Canada. In Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter Salverson makes real the political and cultural history of the twentieth-century North American west, even as she draws the reader into the inner life of a young girl growing up “hopelessly Icelandic” and finding refuge from discrimination and ostracism in the world of books. With a new introduction by Carl Watts situating the memoir and its prolific author in the literary canon, and reproducing Salverson’s original preface for the first time, Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter remains both a Canadian classic and an important social history of the experiences of women and immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century.

Genres: Canada

392 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1981

About the author

Laura Goodman Salverson (née Goodman) was a Canadian author. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the daughter of Lárus Guðmundsson and Ingibjörg Guðmundsdóttir who immigrated to Winnipeg in 1887 from Grundir in Bolungarvík, Iceland. She married George Salverson in 1913.

Her novel The Dark Weaver was awarded the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1937.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is truly a lost gem. After studying history, it was amazing to see an immigration story that struck true and dealt with the precariousness of work, the coming and going to different towns, and the sudden loss of people and family close to you. This is a book I will be pushing on all of my family and friends. I can see why she won the Govern Generals award for it

[Unnur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mér fannst mjög gaman að lesa þessa bók þar sem í henni eru greinagóðar lýsingar á háttum Íslendinga sem fóru til Kanada. Laura er önnur kynslóð vesturfara.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's parents were Icelandic immigrants to Canada in the 18th century. Because of her father's impractical and optimistic nature, they moved frequently throughout Canada and the U.S. She always dreamed of being a writer but poverty put many obstacles in her path.
Although the struggles of settlers in the West, and the nature of Icelandic immigration, have interesting elements, the author spends a great many words trying to show us her great ambitions and amateur philosophizing.