Janis A. Fairbanks for Sugar Bush Babies

Name: Janis A. Fairbanks for Sugar Bush Babies
Start: 2025-10-21T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 318 North Central Ave, Duluth, MN, United States, Minnesota 55807

Schedule

Tue, 21 Oct, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

318 North Central Ave, Duluth, MN, United States, Minnesota 55807 | Duluth, MN

Join Zenith Bookstore for a thought-provoking evening of history on Tuesday, October 21st at 7 pm. Janis A. Fairbanks will be in conversation with Linda LeGarde Grover for her new book Sugar Bush Babies: Stories of My Ojibwe Grandmother (University of Minnesota Press). They will talk about her book, answer questions from the audience, and then personally autograph copies. This is the perfect event to bring a friend or perhaps your whole book club!
A lyrical memoir, Sugar Bush Babies conveys the eloquence of women speaking and sharing through generations and the lasting power of tradition. There are tales told at nighttime or during thunderstorms; lessons in Native medicine; stories of Grandma’s recollections of boarding school, Daddy’s days as a lumberjack, and Mother’s special powers; memories of wash days and dancing, of powwows and Girl Scout camp, of snaring rabbits, selling lilacs, and attending the circus.
Why did Janis keep running away from kindergarten, her mother asked? She wanted to go home. But not to the house they had just moved to in Duluth, with its gravel yard and traffic noise. She was a country girl, and home was the log cabin among the wildflowers on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Bena, Minnesota. Knowing they were now going to stay in the city, Janis’s parents offered her a compromise: during the summer, Janis could leave the bustle of Duluth and live with her grandmother on the Fond du Lac Reservation, listening to stories, learning Ojibwe, and finding her place in the world.
Janis A. Fairbanks is a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. She is involved in preserving and revitalizing the Ojibwe language and was the first coordinator of the Anishinaabemowin Ojibwe Language Program for Fond Du Lac Reservation. She is on the editorial advisory board for Thunderbird Press (Animikii Mazina’iganan) and mentors a writers’ group.
Linda LeGarde Grover is professor emerita of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. Grover has created and explored the imaginary Mozhay Point Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota – beginning with her award-winning debut story collection The Dance Boots and continuing with her novels The Road Back to Sweetgrass, In the Night of Memory, and A Song Over Miskwaa Rapids. She also wrote the poetry collection The Sky Watched and a book blending memoir, history, and Ojibwe tradition Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong.