Family, identity at heart of local author’s new memoir

Winnipeg

Permanence is a concept best not taken for granted.

Brittany Penner is the author of Children Like Us: A Métis Woman’s Memoir of Family, Identity, and Walking Herself Home, out in September via Doubleday Canada. The new book details Penner’s life as a young Indigenous girl growing up in her adopted Mennonite family in southern Manitoba.

“In the beginning of the book, I ask people to be open when they read this book,” Penner said. “When they approach this book, you could be coming at it from all different sorts of angles. If you’re open to the story, and not from an angle of bias, it’s a story, my story, and I don’t have an agenda to say what is right or wrong. It’s one story of many.”

Born in 1989, Penner was placed into care during the tail end of the era known as the 60s Scoop, where Indigenous children in care were placed with settler families as part of larger policies of assimilation.

“I was pushed into care when the decision of where Indigenous children were placed was up to government agency,” Penner said. “It was an extension of the residential school system and all of that.”

The family she was raised by included many other adopted Indigenous siblings, cousins, and aunts and uncles, as well as a number of Indigenous foster siblings.

“My grandparents fostered 160 children, all Indigenous,” Penner said. “I grew up with 21 foster siblings in my life who all came and went. My closest cousins were all adopted, all Indigenous. To me, to be in care and to be Indigenous were inseparable. The concept of family, the concept of home was an ever-moving entity. Permanence was never something to be taken for granted.”

From a young age, writing was something that Penner did as a means of exploring her thoughts and feelings.

“I had originally wanted to write fiction,” Penner said. “I’d thought about writing about different women from different backgrounds, being connected through adoption. It became very clear, very quickly that what I was writing was a fictionalized version of my story. So why not write what it is? So I very quickly turned to memoir.”

Rather than an A-Z chronology, Children Like Us is a product of both Penner’s upbringing and the manner in which she processes her memories.

“Because I was losing so many siblings, I would look obsessively through photo albums and home video to feel some sort of connection. So I’ve incorporated descriptions of those video and photographs, almost a transcription, as a real reflection of how I see my childhood,” she said. “In terms of the writing, I think and process in terms of snippets of moments. It can be a little chaotic at first trying to string those together. I wish I was someone who could have a template and outline, but it’s just not the kind of writer I am. It’s a snapshot here, and snapshot there, you string them together, like a puzzle.”

After completing her undergrad at the University of Winnipeg and med school at the University of Manitoba, Penner and her husband moved from Winnipeg to Blumenort, Man., where Penner is a family doctor. Penner and her husband have a number of cats, and the couple is expecting its first child shortly.

With the memoir, Penner hopes to make a connection with readers, no matter how they come to the text.

“I really hope any Indigenous kids or people out there can help speak to and shed light on their experiences. Mine is not an isolated aberration. For someone else to read that and think, ‘Oh that’s happened to someone else too,’ to feel a little less alone,” she said. “On the other hand, I hope that it can open people’s eyes to those who aren’t aware of these things. I hope it makes space for everyone to question narratives in their own lives.”

Penner will officially launch Children Like Us on Friday, Sept. 5 at McNally Robinson Booksellers (1120 Grant Ave.). The event, which will begin at 7 p.m., will include a reading from the book, as well as a question-and-answer period with Shelagh Rogers.