Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Along a remote, 700-mile stretch of road in northwestern British Columbia, dozens of young women — many of them indigenous — have gone missing or been killed. Now known as the “Highway of Tears,” this area has come to symbolize a wider trend of violence and injustice in Canadian history, representing thousands of violent crimes against indigenous women over the past several decades.
In Highway of Tears, journalist Jessica McDiarmid recounts the stories of some of the women who lost their lives along Highway 16, giving voice to those whose names the wider world has not known. In between the detailed portraits of their lives, McDiarmid traces the history of the region, the trends in reporting on these crimes, and the deficiencies in the investigations.
Quote:
“The Highway of Tears is a lonesome road that runs across a lonesome land. This dark slab of asphalt cuts a narrow path through the vast wilderness of the place, where struggling hayfields melt into dark pine forests, and the rolling fi of the interior careen into jagged coastal mountains. It’s sparsely populated, with many kilometres separating the small towns strung along it, communities forever grappling with the booms and busts of the industries that sustain them. At night, many minutes may pass between vehicles, mostly tractor-trailers on long-haul voyages between the coast and some place farther south. And there is the train that passes in the night, late, its whistle echoing through the valleys long after it is gone.”
Author:
Jessica McDiarmid is a Canadian journalist who has worked across North America and Africa. Her reporting has appeared in The Toronto Star, Harvard Review, and Maisonneuve. Highway of Tears is her first book.
Published: 2019
Length: 296 pages
Set in: British Columbia, Canada