A SERVICE95 BOOKCLUB HYPE READ FOR OCTOBER + HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF AUTUMN 2025
'A powerful, beautiful, wrenching masterpiece ... both a memoir and something that reaches far beyond the personal'' REBECCA SOLNIT, author of HOPE IN THE DARK
'The book I've been waiting my whole life to read' TOMMY ORANGE, author of the Booker longlisted WANDERING STARS
'A story that must be told' KATHLEEN DUVAL, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of NATIVE NATIONS
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"In my people's language, we greet each other each morning by saying "Tsecwinucw-k: 'You survived the night"'
One dark night, a new-born is discovered dumped inside a waste incinerator. The boy, rescued from death, grows into a man who will in turn abandon his own children, including his first-born son Julian Brave NoiseCat.
Behind this father-son story lies an even darker history of abuse, colonialism and vicious attempts to erase North America's First Peoples from their land. Told in the style of a 'Coyote Story', a legend of the trickster forefather of NoiseCat's people, We Survived the Night brings a vanishing artform back to life in this dazzling account of contemporary Indigenous North America. Braiding on-the-ground reportage together with intimate experience, history with mythology, NoiseCat grapples with trauma that cascades across generations to uncover truths about himself, his family and his people - how they survived and how, through vital political, environmental and cultural movements, they are coming back.
An inventive, illuminating and moving narrative from one of the most compelling artists at work today, We Survived the Night is both reconciliation and celebration of Indigenous pain, hope and resurgence - and their power to shape a collective future.
Here is an unforgettable journey of restoration through father-son ties and historic reckoning of Indigenous people, announcing a major new literary talent.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Julian Brave NoiseCat seamlessly connects true tales of identity and betrayal, love and abandonment, clarity and confusion. We Survived the Night is a whirling, radiant gift to the reader -- Louise Erdrich, author of The Night Watchman This powerful book is a journey by torchlight through Julian's own family story, and the torches are coyote stories and broader histories of Indigenous North America. Braided together, the three become one narrative of suffering, survival, love and its failures and successes, continuities and ruptures, so that most of all it's a book of loss and recovery. It's a beautiful, wrenching, important masterpiece, both a memoir and something that reaches far beyond the personal. -- Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark Written in gorgeous, sparse prose, We Survived the Night reads like a novel. Told with a blistering honesty, the truth and grit create a beautifully woven coyote story we haven't heard before. This is a love letter to Oakland, to the Canim Lake Band Tsq'secen of the Secwepemc Nation, to a father from his son, to the act of being a Native person in the twenty first century finding ways to love even through all that wounds have opened and wrought. With this, Julian Brave NoiseCat has written a book I've been waiting my whole life to read. -- Tommy Orange We Survived the Night is filled with that thing I look for in all great art - love deepened by sorrow, sorrow widened by love. Survival, yes. NoiseCat is one of our great new Scheherazades - he keeps people alive in his stories. And people will want to stay alive because of them -- Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! From its chilling opening pages, We Survived the Night grips the reader with a story that must be told: of crime and loss, of heartbreak and wonder, of death and survival, and of startling and inspiring resilience -- Kathleen DuVal, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Native Nations Part mythopoetic yet literal memoir, part history, part cartography of vast and intricate cosmologies - interlaced with human wrongs-part love story and story of self-discovery-this gorgeously written, deeply courageous mini epic by Julian Brave NoiseCat is an essential guide to waking up in our new, yet ancient, human emergency. It's not easy. It's not always possible. But We Survived The Night is the book we need to read right now if we hope to survive this night -- Jorie Graham, author of The Dream of the Unified Field Invigorating and soul-stirring, We Survived the Night is a book whose epic scale - encompassing explorations of history, language, land, and politics, as well as of family bonds, artmaking, and storytelling - astonishes me. It is a tribute, in the end, to love which is intimate and clear-eyed enough to see one's own father and mother, and capacious enough to hold the whole world -- Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief The book takes its name from the Secwepemctsin morning greeting and the acknowledgement that to still be here can never be taken for granted. Bringing the same rigour to the page as he did to his Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane about the Canadian Indian residential school system, We Survived The Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence -- Maria Padget, Book Club Director, Service95 Oscar-nominated filmmaker NoiseCat blends journalism with memoir in this powerful book about the First Peoples of North America. Setting out across the country, he delivers a cultural epic that chronicles the intimate stories of different communities - from the movement fighting against the Dakota Access Pipeline to the activists leading the campaign to change the name of Washington's American football team - all the while finding the thread that connects to his own personal history -- Best Books of Autumn 25 * Harpers Bazaar UK * Praise for NoiseCat * : * 'His words and images take us to places of greater understanding, places where we are invited into the lives, journeys, joys, and sorrows of amazing people who might otherwise go unseen. We are, all of us, broadened and connected by his vital work.' * The American Mosaic Journalism Prize * NoiseCat stands where the currents of climate journalism, advocacy and policy meet. His writing on the environment crackles with reported stories and historical context. * TIME Magazine * Praise for Sugarcane * - * Immersive and incredibly beautiful' * The New York Times * Has a stomach-churning potency * The Times * NoiseCat's is possibly the most compelling of the four entwined narratives that the movie follows * Guardian *
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and champion powwow dancer. His award-winning journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and New Yorker. He is the co-director of Sugarcane, which won the Sundance Film FestivalGrand Jury award for Directing and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. NoiseCat is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie. We Survived the Night is his first book.
