Becoming a Matriarch: A memoir

Helen Knott
Publisher: Knopf Canada

Book Description

Helen Knott’s debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins, wowed reviewers, award juries, and readers alike with its profoundly honest and moving account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and survival. Now, in her highly anticipated second book, Knott returns with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy.

Having lost both her mom and grandmother in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of the women who raised her, but of the woman she thought she was.

Woven into the pages are themes of mourning, sobriety through loss, and generational dreaming. Becoming a Matriarch is charted with poetic insights, sass, humour, and heart, taking the reader over the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa territory in Northeastern British Columbia, along the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, and straight to the heart of what matriarchy truly means. This is a journey through pain, on the way to becoming.

Author Bio

Helen Knott is a Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw, Métis, and mixed Euro-descent woman from Prophet River First Nations, and lives in Fort St. John, British Columbia. In 2016 Helen was one of sixteen global change makers featured by the Nobel Women’s Initiative for being committed to ending gender-based violence. Helen was selected as a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author. Her debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins (University of Regina Press, 2019), was a national bestseller, longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Indigenous Peoples’ Publishing.