teatimereads: An Announcement

Hi friends! as a mod team, we weren’t aware of how much fatphobia is in The House in the Cerulean Sea, nor did we realize that it was based off of “The Sixties Scoop”, where the Canadian government removed Indigenous children from their homes and placed them with unrelated white, middle-class families (more information here).  

For those unsure on how this book was chosen, each month the tea party attendees suggest & vote for a book they want to read. The suggestion came from a tea party attendee, and we did not think to properly research and look into the chosen book before announcing that, and for that we are deeply sorry. In the future, we promise to do a better job of vetting all suggestions. This book does not align with our morals, or the morals of our book club, which is why we have decided to pull The House in the Cerulean Sea as our teatimereads may pick.

We want to explicitly state that we do not condone fatphobia, and while we had been made aware of it as a trigger warning, we were not aware just how much of a role it played throughout the novel. 

We sincerely apologise for any harm this may have caused our tea party members. 

We recommend the following books to learn more about The Sixties Scoop:

• Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship by Allyson D. Stevenson
• Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else): A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home by Colleen Cardinal
• Behind the Smile: A Survivor of the Metis Sixties Scoop
• No Quiet Place: Review Committee on Indian and Metis Adoptions and Placements by Edwin C. Kimelman

To show your support for the Indigenous community, and support the efforts to keep families together, we recommend donating to The Caring Society. Furthermore, this resource has a comprehensive list of Indigenous charities you can donate to as well.