Photo: Sonya Ballantyne
By Shari Narine
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Windspeaker.com
Today’s Sonya Ballantyne still considers herself as unbeatable as her younger self did. That young girl is the focus of the author’s new autobiographical graphic novel The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne.
“I feel like I still am (unbeatable)…The obstacles are different than when I was younger, but they’re still there. But I feel like I’m more capable now of taking them on. I feel like the gumption and the stubbornness I had as a little kid is still there… (but) I don’t have to give a hundred per cent of myself all the time so…(it’s) a lot more manageable,” said Ballantyne, who is Swampy Cree from Misipawistik Cree Nation in northern Manitoba.
The idea of writing about her youth was conceived over the last five years. And those were difficult years on a personal level, she says, although her career as a filmmaker and panelist at conventions had become “really amazing.”
The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne, geared towards youth ages 12 to 14 years old, focuses on Sonya from birth to becoming the first in her family to graduate high school and then go on to university. During these years, Sonya faces the challenges of racism, gender discrimination, bullying, and her own sexuality. She struggles to find a role model who looks like her until actor, playwright and activist Michelle Thrush turns up at her school.
“There’s a saying that you can’t be what you don’t see. How the hell was I supposed to be a writer if I’d never seen someone like me doing it? But Michelle had the same hair, same eyes and same way of talking as me. And she was Cree. Her presence at my school flew in the face of everything I’d ever been told about what Cree women could do,” realizes the younger wide-eyed Sonya in the book.
Ballantyne presents her youth as a “superhero story” and writes in the foreword, “In superhero stories, parents are good, the world is ultimately just, and the hero always overcomes.”
But her youth wasn’t a “superhero story.”
“My parents were not in the best situation to be parents when I was young. And that took a lot of acceptance from me and empathy on my part not to, for lack of a better word, air them out… I didn’t feel the importance of including that because it wasn’t an essential part of the story,” Ballantyne told Windspeaker.com.
Instead, she focuses in the book on the time her father stood up for her in an encounter with a racist man and the love for movies she got from her mother.
She also points out that the superpower she had as a kid— the love of writing—is still the superpower she holds today.
“Everything that made me who I am now was there. I just had to develop it. I just had to learn how to use it,” she said.
Ballantyne, who is an award-winning filmmaker, initially considered making The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne as a documentary. However, writing Michael Redhead Champagne’s Little by Little You Can Change the World graphic novel about his early life persuaded her otherwise.
“I got to talk to him about certain aspects of the story and what he wanted to ensure was in there…One thing he really wanted to ensure was…the importance of literacy and how important books were to him when he was a kid. And so that was something that really inspired me,” said Ballantyne. “I had a lot more freedom to do things in the graphic novel that I might not have been able to do with film…I just really liked how the format fit.”
Ballantyne hopes that Indigenous kids see themselves in The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne and understand they can be writers and artists too. The graphic team for the book includes Indigenous artists Rheal McGregor (Métis) and Azby Whitecalf (Plains Cree).
She also hopes they understand that it is good to be different.
“Everybody has a uniqueness that can either be something that is celebrated or something that is trying to be contained. And I think that was something I really didn’t like when I grew up on the reserve…Anything that made me act non-Indigenous, according to the community, was something that I had to hide. My being a big nerd, being somebody who loved books, that sort of thing,” said Ballantyne.
“I also want Native kids to find their own heroism in themselves because while I was looking for a hero when I was a kid, I ended up becoming the one I needed,” she said.
As for non-Indigenous kids, Ballantyne hopes they are able to connect with someone they haven’t been able to before.
The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne is published by HighWater Press and released March 10. It can be ordered online at https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-unbeatable-sonya-ballantyne/9781774921371.html