It is exciting to me that this story had such an impact on the author as a child that she decided to write it out and share it. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that her goal was to increase the availability of the story for an Indigenous readership, as she talks a little bit in her intro about the way stories are lost even to the people they belong to. Incidentally, as a white person, I was struck by the careful, intimate characterization of the two title characters. Rarely do I see old women depicted with this much interest, straightforwardness, and complexity in media. It’s good for people to read stories like this about old women. It’s antisexist.

When authors publish stories in order to keep them alive and available to the people who need them I get emotional. The necessity of publishing in English is brutal. This kind of literature, whether it’s Two Old Women or Tales from the Scottish Highlands, breaks my heart down the middle. Not to conflate the genocide and ongoing colonialism of the United States with the British Imperialism that subordinated Scotland. They are two very different histories. The throughline is that I hate the cultural black holes of the english language and christianity. Projects like Wallis’ challenge great evils. It’s hard for me to think of books that are more vital than these.