The Outside Circle
A powerful graphic novel about two Indigenous brothers fighting poverty, gang violence, and addiction as they seek healing from historic trauma.
đź“– House of Anansi Press • Started 2015
Pete is a young Indigenous man wrapped up in gang violence, spending his days collecting money for a drug dealer while looking after his younger brother, Joey, and their heroin-addicted mother. One night, a violent confrontation with his mother’s abusive boyfriend ends with the boyfriend dead and Pete in jail—and Joey placed in foster care. For a while Pete keeps his ties to his crew from behind bars, until a brutal jail brawl forces him to see the corrosive influence he has become on his little brother. That reckoning sets him on a different road: a journey through traditional Indigenous healing circles, ceremonies, and the long, difficult work of rehabilitating centuries of historic trauma.
The Outside Circle is a deeply moving 128-page graphic novel written by Patti LaBoucane-Benson—a Métis researcher whose twenty years of work with gang-affiliated and incarcerated Indigenous men grounds every page—and illustrated with captivating emotional depth by Edmonton’s Kelly Mellings. Published by House of Anansi Press in 2015, it won the CODE’s 2016 Burt Award for First Nation, Inuit and Métis Literature and was short-listed for the In the Margins Top Fiction Award.
Perfect for fans of This Place: 150 Years Retold, A Girl Called Echo, and the work of Richard Van Camp. Order the graphic novel from House of Anansi Press.
