(Re)Mapping Gendered Geographies in Native Women’s Non-Fiction: The Poetics of Vulnerability in Terese Marie Mailhot’s Memoir

Abstract

This article explores child sexual abuse (CSA) in Heart Berries: A Memoir (2019) by Seabird Island Band member Terese Marie Mailhot. It argues that Mailhot mobilises her wounded subjectivity and inhabits vulnerability as a site of critical resistance, operating between the embodied and the structural. Drawing on Tonawanda Band of Seneca scholar Mishuana Goeman’s (2013) concept of “(re)mapping” and Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Simpson’s (2015) project of “radical resurgence,” it examines Indigenous epistemologies countering colonial systems of health inequity and gendered violence. It foregrounds the lived experiences of Indigenous female CSA survivors by distinguishing two forms of vulnerability: embodied vulnerability (manifesting in physical and psychological symptoms) and structural vulnerability (manifesting at the communal and systemic levels). By forging a link between Indigenous feminist thought and vulnerability studies, it contributes to broader debates in literary and cultural studies, proposing a decolonial framework to approach CSA in intimate and systemic dimensions.