It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl

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Summary: The Examined Life
Review: I want to share this editorial mention of IT STOPS WITH ME in FOREWORD MAGAZINE's November/December 2004 issue and website with readers.

THE EXAMINED LIFE: BIOGRAPHIES OF NOTABLE LIVES, BOTH EXTRAORDINARY AND ORDINARY

by Bonnie Deigh
Category: Biography And Memoir

Modern conventional wisdom holds that every family is dysfunctional; perhaps that's why a well told tale of family dysfunction touches our hearts. Several new titles explore the dysfunctional-and, in a few cases, unusually normal-lives of memoirists, playwrights, novelists, and poets....
It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl (0-9746545-0-7, Touch Art) takes a more somber look at abuse and the family and social systems that enable it. "He wasn't wrong," artist and activist Charleen Touchette, who writes articles about Native cultures and women's issues, recalls knowing. "I was a bad girl. My daddy had to hit me." The family's duty in their French-Canadian/Métis culture was to hide the truth: "Do not tell what your father does." Having grown up in a home whose outward artifice of perfection masked violence and neglect, she escaped into the bohemian world of New York in the 1960s ['70s]-where violence and neglect paraded unmasked. As the truth of her past forced its way into the light through her artwork and, eventually, through her health, she found it necessary to confront the demons of her childhood. "I was not the first girl to be abused in my family," she concludes. "But I will be the first to say, c'est fini. No more. It stops here with me."...
These books- portraits of the gentle and the flamboyant, the dying and the recovering, the poet and the novelist-fascinate readers as they illuminate the ordinary and extraordinary conditions that influence human lives.


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Summary: Captivating and sober memoir of a difficult and varied life
Review: It Stops With Me: Memoir Of A Canuck Girl is the autobiography of artist, writer, curator, educator and activist Charleen Touchette. Narrating a life steeped in traditions of both French Canadian and Indian cultures, but also darkened by the legacies of anger, alcoholic rages, and violence, It Stops With Me tells of one woman's journey from girlhood to motherhood, to being debilitated by an illness that compels her to face the dark memories of her past. A captivating and sober memoir of a difficult and varied life.


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Summary: The most moving book!
Review: It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl, the latest work by author-artist Charleen Touchette invites you into the provincial world of a French Canadian girl in Rhode Island who cannot tell anybody her family secrets. She escapes home for Wellesley College at seventeen - then her world becomes enormous when she leaves Wellesley for Bard College, falls in love, becomes an artist, and moves to New York City where she hobnobs with artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, connects with Indian artists and is embraced her lover's warm Jewish family of Canadian expatriates in Minnesota. She moves to Indian Country on her spiritual path and continues to focus on women's and Native art issues and activism. Years later when she has her first daughter she must relive her childhood to heal the future generations of her family.
This compelling story reaches out to people of all backgrounds and ages with a message of healing. Charleen reclaims her ancestors and finds herself woven deep within a culture where women are the cornerstone of the home and also powerful healers and storytellers. The book contains selections of nearly three decades of the artist's work, including a color series depicting her life as a girl in Woonsocket. Similar to Hadyn Herrera's biography of Frida Khalo with ninety-one pages of black and white art and thirty-two pages of color art, It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl is a manifesto in twenty-first century feminist thought and a spellbinding trip through the imagination of a young girl who becomes a remarkable woman despite insurmountable odds.

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Summary: The most moving book!
Review: It was by far the most emotional experience I've ever had with a book. I felt a range of emotions from grief to joy, and the book left me feeling ultimately inspired. It's honesty and courage served as catalysts, encouraging me to face some important and unresolved issues within my current relationships, and I'll be forever grateful.

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Summary: inspiring
Review: This book is amazing. It is a lesson that everyone can heal from a painful past.

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Summary: A transforming Story with beautiful art
Review: This story is transforming and takes the reader from despair to renewal. The Art in the book is original and like no other American artist I know. Touchette is America's Frida.