Written and directed by Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, Rhymes for Young Ghouls offers an unflinching fictional account of Indigenous agency in the face of the horrors of Canada’s Indian residential schools.

The 2013 drama (R, 88 min.) continues a series of film screenings in conjunction with Big Read 2022. It revolves around Aila, a 15-year-old member of the fictional Red Crow Mi’gmaq reservation in 1976. A government decree dictates that she and everyone else on the reservation under the age of 16 must attend residential school, where they are at the mercy of the sadistic Indian agent who runs it.

She must choose to run or fight, and “Mi’gmaq don’t run.”

Big Read 2022 revolves around the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, Joy Harjo, and her acclaimed book An American Sunrise. The nearly two-month initiative is a celebration of poetry and reading, as well as Native American literature and culture.

Explore Big Read 2022 at kclibrary.org/bigread.