Michelle Good is a storyteller who's just getting started
Winner of the 2021 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction.
Michelle Good's debut novel Five Little Indians tells the story of five friends making their way in downtown Vancouver after surviving the residential school system.
Your novel Five Little Indians came out when you were in your 60s, which is after you earned an MFA degree in your 50s, which follows the career in law you started pursuing in your 40s. That’s a ton of work that you took on at a time in life when many people are winding down -- what drives that for you?
I just believe we’re given one life here on earth -- who knows what happens next -- and we should treat it that way. If there are things we feel driven or compelled to do, we should do them. So that’s what I did.
I understand Ethel Wilson, particularly her book Swamp Angel was an important book for you when you were young and discovering literature.
It’s really everything by Ethel Wilson that I love, but what you need to understand is when I was 16 I had just negotiated my way out of foster care. I was at this time still a ward of the state, but I was permitted to live alone, which is really something I needed. And I was doing an English lit course, and that’s how I was introduced to Canadian literature.
"... literature is like a song, like jazz, where the power is really between the lines."
So we were assigned Swamp Angel and I was so blown away. I read it again immediately. It was a beautiful “aha” moment about the uniqueness of Canadian literature and what it means to understand something as literary fiction. I was also reading Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, all these trailblazing women. And reading their work gave me insight into how literature is like a song, like jazz, where the power is really between the lines, how the writing creates a frame and the reader furnishes the unspoken through their own conscious absorption of the work.
That’s an incredible insight to gain at sixteen. Is that the moment you realized you were a writer?
Both my parents were avid readers and that was something that was modeled to us from the time we were infants. I think it was a progressive thing to go from allowing myself to be possessed by a world created in a novel to moving up to this sense of literary fiction, to develop that notion of craft that makes room for the reader.
But no, that’s not when I realized I was a writer. I was talking with Waubgeshig Rice the other day and I was saying to him the older I get the more I believe writers are born, not trained. It’s a mindset of observing, considering, and recording. And I’ve been doing that since I was 11 years old, as a nerdy little kid with a journal under my arm all the time. Wherever I was, I was writing something.
Is there a writer that helped you conceive of yourself as an Indigenous writer, as someone who can carry the weight of representation while creating literary art?
That would be Louise Erdrich. Her book Love Medicine was just a mind-boggling experience for me to read. I think it was the first time I’d read a deliberately braided narrative, where the author creates a circular movement through time and with multiple characters, and all of it carrying across different books. What she’s able to do in terms of creating a massive world where she can pull in all kinds of history and do it within a beautiful reading experience. It’s extraordinary.
Speaking of history, I’ve spoken with a number of other historical novelists, and in their practice of researching for background, the history is more or less there for them to discover. Is it fair to say that Indigenous history is different, that in the research you’re contending with other history that’s written over it?
In the case of Five Little Indians, it’s really based on my own life experiences. My mother, my grandmother, my aunties and uncles, they all went to residential schools. I started working with Indigenous organizations when I was a teenager, and virtually everybody that I was working with was a survivor. So seeing how that impacted their lives was just a part of my life -- I didn’t have to learn about it through research.
"My mother, my grandmother, my aunties and uncles, they all went to residential schools. I started working with Indigenous organizations when I was a teenager, and virtually everybody that I was working with was a survivor."
The book I’m working on now, my second novel, is loosely based on my great-grandmother, who was born in 1856. And she never saw a non-Indigenous person until she was in her late teens, maybe even early 20s. So I had to conceptualize this pre-contact Indigenous woman who has lived a traditional lifestyle right up until that point. And I need to capture the impact of various colonial concepts like the military and law and how she would have conceived of these things. So there’s been a ton of research involved in things like getting the dates and the players and geography right. But I’m such a nerd I absolutely love the work.
So to answer your question, I think you characterized it correctly. Canadian history is told through a colonial lens. There’s a massive gap in history from the Indigenous perspective. I think if we’re ever to achieve a level playing field in this country we need to look at history through the Indigenous lens as well. I don’t know how many people really understand or realize that in my great-grandmother’s lifetime there were laws and actions taken to basically eradicate Indigenous people from the plains to make room for settlers. And that created harm that echoed through subsequent generations. So what I’m trying to do is contribute a different take on that history.
Thinking back to that 11-year-old girl with the journal who just loves writing in her journal -- with the weight of politics and history, is writing still fun for you?
Oh yes! Storytelling is so important, and I’m getting to an age now where I’ve had experiences that a lot of younger people haven’t had, so I think it’s my place to start telling. I’ve warned people accordingly. [laughs]
Five Little Indians has been on a winning streak this book award season. As we speak, you’ve just won the Rakuten Kobo 2021 Emerging Writer Prize. Can you give us a sense of what it’s like to be experiencing that?
I just think prizes like this one, that recognize emerging writers, are so important. They raise the profile of the book, and in my case it means more people engaging with the story, and opening their hearts and minds. It’s a support I feel so grateful for. ◼
This interview has been edited for clarity.

Five Little Indians
Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can’t stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew.
With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.