From the Ashes
Jesse Thistle
Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for FROM THE ASHES includes an introduction and discussion questions. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

Jesse Thistle, once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is.

From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Consider Jesse’s childhood pain and constant longing for his parents’ love. How are hunger and longing significant to Jesse and his memories of his childhood? How do they shape who he becomes? How do these feelings transform throughout the memoir?

2. Consider Jesse’s taunts and anger toward his brother. What exactly does Jesse seem to hate? Why do you think Jesse rejects his Métis-Cree heritage? How can we make connections between his anger at his parents, his frustration with himself, and his rejection of his heritage?

3. Throughout the memoir, the power of choice, and the results of making the “right” choice, weigh on Jesse. In what ways does he seem to feel like he has no choice, like he must behave in manners he knows are wrong? How might these decisions be connected to intergenerational trauma? How do others try to convince him that he does have a choice?

4. While Jesse and his brothers experience childhood events together, he processes his trauma differently. What factors from the book do you see contributing to this? How do their approaches to healing also differ, and what does this suggest?

5. Why does it affect Jesse so much when Karen tells him he should be proud of his Indigenous heritage? Why do you think he was scared to tell her at first? What does this exchange tell us about the relationship between identity and acceptance?

6. When Jesse and his grandmother go to shop at the Bay, she declares, “Our family built this country, Jesse.” How do her past and her story challenge colonial narratives of Canadian history?

7. How do Jesse’s interactions with other minorities underline the themes of power imbalances throughout the memoir? What does the book suggest about how these communities fit into Canada as a colonial nation? How might Jesse’s experiences speak to the challenges diasporic Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities face in Canada and beyond?

8. Jesse describes his ancestors as the “forgotten people.” In what ways is he also a “forgotten” person? How are his personal history and familial history forgotten? What mechanisms, structurally and historically, are in place to make a people forgotten, and how do they configure here? What other communities might be considered forgotten?

9. Gabor Maté notes in his introduction that in Canada, “a scandalous preponderance of jail inmates are Indigenous.” What does this fact say about the prison system in Canada? How does it speak to bias and the practice of othering? What are additional ways in which the “legacy of colonialism” affects Indigenous communities today?

10. Consider when Priest tells Jesse that all convicts are “broken-hearted people hurt by life” and that it’s all “love gone bad.” How is this true for Jesse? How has love gone bad for him?

11. Consider how many people help Jesse over the course of his life. How does their goodwill help him? Are there ways in which it hurts him? How do these acts change or inform his understanding of the world?