Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange / 2024

Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange / 2024

Wandering Stars in many ways feels like a strategic recoil and reaction against the commercial success of its prequel There, There. The conversations about indigenous resilience, hope, and identity definitely got a bit romantic, pitying and irksome in some corners, as readers leaned on it so heavily to attempt to understand urban Native experiences. 

Wandering Stars succeeds in a few ways: 1) its portrayal of the family's aftermath: the boy who once taught himself Native dance through YouTube videos now hates the trauma associated with his Native identity and turns to drugs.  The family's trauma after the mass shooting damaged not just their relationships to their Native roots but their ability to care for one another adequately. This aftermath is felt like a necessary counterpoint to the narrative catharsis of There, There. 2) There are poetic heights, especially in the wandering star metaphor, that truly soar just as high as the jawdropping debut. 

The novel fails for me in that it feels too sprawling without the same narrative coherence of There, There. At times, the voice felt didactic or hamfisted about woke topics, such as Native appropriation of Black culture via hip-hop and non-binary identity. This book has a much less glamorous view of survival and points to the devastating loss and sometimes embarrassingly pitiful attempts at revival as a critical part of their characters’ Native sense of self.  As someone whose indigenous heritage has been so present yet far removed, it's a bitter reflection, at once a hug and a jolt. I think Wandering Stars is a book white people will have a harder time celebrating and feeling good about, but is a crucial counterpoint. I struggled with the pessimism of Wandering Stars, which I think is more rightfully called realism, and continue to wrestle with my frustrations with it and whether I’m wrong.  3/5

Custer Died For Your Sins / Vine Deloria Jr / 1969

Custer Died For Your Sins / Vine Deloria Jr / 1969

feel like this book is the Native version of Souls of Black Folk and Black Marxism, dutifully teasing out a history of indigenous resistance and spelling out elements of Native culture in a sharp and stirring voice. Chapters in, I realized Deloria was the predecessor of the gorgeous and erudite poetic sweeps taken by Tommy Orange in his novels.  The Du Bois comparison comes from Delorias's historic breakdown of the indigenous plight with attention to cultural elements like Native humor (compare this to Du Bois breakdown of the blues and spiritual tradition). The Robinson comparison comes from Deloria's critical Marxist leanings and biting humor. I deeply appreciate Custer Died for Your Sins for elucidating the relationships between Black and Native movements, including the lack of enthusiasm in some Native circles for the civil rights movement: the US government doesn't follow its own laws, so many viewed the Civil Rights Movement as a lost cause, and the sense among some indigenous folx that Black people were gonna fall into an identity trap in the Black Power movement.  Deloria includes a breakdown of native caricatures in pop culture and media that really provided context for the ways racism differed for Blacks and Natives. Deloria occasionally ventured into strange but fun arguments, such as his chapter on how white people were returning to tribalism via corporate culture, but by and large, Delorea provides a much needed history and perspective on where the Native leftist movement has been and where it needs to go.  His critiques of the Bureau of Indian Affairs effectively changed parts of the agency in the years after publication.  While not perfect, Custer Died for Your Sins did A LOT to fill in the gaps of my own miseducation.  4.5/5

Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador / Virginia Tilley / 2005

Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador / Virginia Tilley / 2005

I’ve known about this book for years but didn’t read it, because I read a review that said something along the lines of “this white woman gets indigenous identity wrong.” I couldn’t disagree more whole-heartedly. What Seeing Indians sets out to do is explain how the racial politics of mestizaje and indigenous rights plays out in Central America, specifically El Salvador, and how global indigenous politics further marginalize El Salvador’s indigenous groups. Rather than advocating for a particular interpretation of indigenous identity, she simply gives a lay of the land, providing crucial clarity for folks trying to understand racism in El Salvador and IndoAmerica at large. Reading Seeing Indians enabled me to see clearly the apartheid in Guatemala and the racism of Guatemala and El Salvador, whereas before I would be somewhat confused and unsure if I just simply didn’t have more historical or social context for a dynamic or work of art or situation. Seeing Indians provides many leads for a young researcher to explore in their understanding of Latin America. I whole-heartedly recommend it especially for people outside of Latin America, trying to better understand the racial politics of mestizaje. 4 /5   

Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica / eds, Laura E. Matthews & Michael R. Odjik / 2012

Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica / eds, Laura E. Matthews & Michael R. Odjik / 2012 

A necessary volume of essays on the history of indigenous conquest especially in Mexico and Central America, I recommend this book to anyone interested in better understanding mestizaje and indigenous and Latino identity in the Americas. Banished are the white supremacist myths of Cortes and the Spanish defeating the Mexica on their own, as well as progressives’ lingering romantic flattening of Native Americans as purely vanquished and victimized. I first encountered this book in grad school and I’m glad I returned to it. While the chapters got more redundant and less interesting as Matthews and Odjik’s arguments became more and more solidified, they remained fascinating in their particularity and the underlying mysteries. 4/5 

Wovoka: The Life and Legacy of the Prophet of the Ghost Dance Movement / Charles Rivers Editors / 2022

Wovoka: The Life and Legacy of the Prophet of the Ghost Dance Movement / Charles Rivers Editors / 2022 

I first learned about Wovoka in Our History is Our Future by Nick Estes and was moved to learn of a Paiute prophet so central to Native American history, because the Paiute are particularly marginalized and humiliated in Native American history. Sold to the Spanish as slaves by both the Utes and Dine, they weren’t particularly renowned for their military skills. Their own original story pokes fun at this hierarchy, humbly and humorously claiming their people were brown because they were made out of shit. I’m drawn to Wovoka’s story because it gives Paiutes a pretty central role in US Native history. Charles Rivers Editors did an excellent job contextualizing Wovoka’s teachings within a global indigenous context, drawing parallels in Africa and the Pacific. Essentially, in the face of genocide and a dramatic change of lifestyle, there’s a strain of indigenous thought that conservatively retreats into tradition, claiming that if indigenous folks dig their heels into their spiritual practice, the gods will vanquish their colonizers for them. In Wovoka’s case, this is the spirit dance and ceremony. The spirit dance promised a decolonized future, where the relationship between humans and nature were restored and white men were wiped off the face of the earth. The stomps in the spirit dance were sometimes literally supposed to be stomping the white man under the earth. The spirit dance inspired Natives across North America facing genocide and gave them the hope to continue resisting, rather than dying and/or assimilating. This contribution changes the course of US Native history in two dramatic ways: 1) First, it inspires the resistance of the Lakota Sioux, one of the most resistant indigenous nations of North America, who interpreted Wovoka’s teachings in a way that inspired violent resistance. The book does an excellent job here delineating between Wovoka’s teachings and differing between varying Paiute, Lakota, and federal white man interpretations of them. The Lakota Sioux popularized the spirit dance the most and led a resistance movement to be crushed but not vanquished at Wounded Knee. 2) Because the dance was associated with anticolonial indigenous movements, the US government outlawed all Native dance, ceremonial, and religious practices. The US also anglicized the name as the Ghost Dance to give it a spookier, more terrorist edge. These are two pivotal moments of North American native history where Wovoka played a critical role! On top of all that, there is some speculation that Wovoka’s teachings were somewhat inspired by Mormonism. Wovoka incorporated Christian theology into his teachings in ways that aren’t entirely clear to me, but Wovoka clearly occupies a similar mystic and revelatory lineage of the era, which includes Joseph Smith. The LDS (Mormon) teaching that Jesus visited the Americas and that Natives are a Jewish, Biblical people was apparently sometimes interpreted by some Natives to mean Jesus was Native and some went as far to identify Wovoka with a reincarnation of Jesus. I wish I could talk about this history with my former students in Cedar City, as there’s a lot of layers here. If folks have recommendations on more reads relevant to Wovoka, please let me know. 5/5 

Our History is Our Future: Standing Rock Vs the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance / Nick Estes / 2019

Our History is Our Future: Standing Rock Vs the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance / Nick Estes / 2019

I slept on this book for a bit because I thought that all the news I read and conversations with friends on the ground would have made some of the information in this book redundant. That wasn’t the case at all. In fact, I’d argue that Nick Estes performs here a version of what Cedric Robinson performed in Black Marxism. I found particularly moving Estes’s discussion of the Ghost Dance movement, led by a Paiute prophet Wovoka. In my experience, Paiutes are extremely marginalized, even in Native circles, and are frequently portrayed as a largely peaceful, undefiant band of Natives, so finding such a monumental figure in the history of Indigenous resistance was exciting. I also deeply appreciated Estes’ discussion of the AIM movement and its transition away from armed militant struggle to international solidarity campaigns. I was unaware of the role indigenous nations played in the UN and their ties to Palestine. Indeed, it was horrifying to learn of Israel’s role in Standing Rock as well. Israel shared its crowd control technologies and referred to the water protectors as a Hamas insurgency in the US (maybe slightly paraphrased here). US forces particularly targeted Middle Eastern, and of course, Palestinian activists who participated. This book was infuriating and inspiring to read and I’m so grateful for it. 5/5  

Never Whistle in The Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology / edited byShane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. / 2023

Never Whistle in The Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology / edited byShane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. / 2023

I admittedly came into this anthology hoping for Stephen Graham Jones level fiction. His forward is better than most of the short stories in this uneven collection. The best stories are "The Ones Who Killed Us" by Brandon Hobson, "Sundays" by David H. W. W. , "Hunger" by Pheonix Boudreau, and "The Preppers" by Morgan Talty. At its worst, descriptions of blatant racist mistreatment attempts to pass off for horror and plot holes defeat the illusion or allure of the stories. A few even engage in a sort of stereotyping misrepresentation of their own spiritual cultures to create horror in a way that only feels inches away from a cursed native burial ground trope, something I hoped this book would save readers from. I'm surprised there's no skinwalkers mentioned. I know there might be a taboo going on here, but the Paiutes I knew could joke about skinwalkers on microphones at pow wows, so I expected horror stories to be okay. "Sundays" confronts the child sexual abuse in boarding schools with a careful, brutal story of one man's attempt at vengeance. "The Prepper" puts us in the head of an incarcerated man who narrates the intergenerational trauma, mental illness and delusion that lead him on a killing spree. "Hunger" perhaps fails in that it reduces the predatory nature of a white frat boy trope to a sort of demonic possession. The protagonist is saved by a deus ex machina essentially and it was disappointing the way a surprising amount of the these authors relied on this move. That said, it was so captivating I didn't even mind much. I expected better from Rebecca Roanhorse and Tommy Orange, but their stories were competently written. 3/5

Imaginary Borders / Xiuhtezcatl Martinez / 2020

Imaginary Borders / Xiuhtezcatl Martinez / 2020

In 63 short pages, Martinez attempts to convince everyone, but especially youth and perhaps especially especially youth of color, to get involved in the environmental activism. What drew me to the book was Martinez’s blunt, no bullshit language and the hip-hop lean in his voice. What kept me there was his clear-eyed understanding of the challenges facing our planet, the solutions available, and the facts and research to back things up. In particular, Martinez writes a sharp argument for the urgent need to include people of color on the front lines of the movement. As someone who has spent the past year understand what intellectual traditions keep people of color out of environmental canons and programs and how writers and artists of color have contributed to the fight against climate change, I deeply appreciate Martinez punchy contribution. Written with urgency and in a casual conversational tone, Imaginary Borders is a perfect text for distracted and disillusioned teenagers. I recommend this book for environmentalists, young adults, and anyone interested in hip-hop activism.

I give this book a 3.5/5

As a side note, Xiuhtezcatl also raps. Their latest album is worth a listen and their discography fits cleanly alongside folks like Rebel Diaz, Logic, Flobots, Frank Waln, and other rappers joined by positivity and wokeness.

August to March Round-Up: 27 Books!

Hello world,

August 2020 to October 2020, my only real goal every day was getting through my workday. My therapist specifically had me working on not caring how productive I was each day, so I can base my self-love and self-worth on something other than my productivity. I appreciate my therapist for the revolutionary challenge and change she sparked in me and my sense of self. It really helped connect me to a truer, more peaceful version of myself. Anyway, personal growth aside, I managed to keep reading a lot, but fell very behind on the book reviews. In late March 2020, I made the goal of writing a book review for every book I read throughout a year. In a desperate attempt to keep by my personal goal, here’s a round-up of 27 books I read that I didn’t get around to writing a complete blog post for.

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas / Roberto Lovato / 2020

One of the most comprehensive books on the contemporary Salvadoran migrant experience ever written. I hope it becomes a classic in Central American and Latinx studies. It’s all here: 1932, the civil war, migration, understanding gang violence, and one man’s reflections and making sense of it all. It’s a book I wish I would have read when I was 13. Lovato is one of our fiercest and sharpest voices. With the swagger of a once-gang member, once-born again Christian, and once revolutionary, Lovato writes in searing, lucid prose. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Latinx and Latin American histories, international politics, memoir, war literature, or gang literature. 5/5

The Book of Delights / Ross Gay / 2019

Written during the Trump era, Ross writes blunt, poetic observations of his daily life, in an attempt to flesh out the delight. In doing so, Ross opens our senses to the wonder and deliciousness, sometimes quotidian, sometimes spectacular, always somehow ubiquitous. Listening to this book is one of the most healing things I’ve done and practiced in the past month. This is not a book without its share of sorrow and loss, but a practice in staying present in the moment and finding the stars in the darkness. I recommend this book to everyone, but especially think it provides a valuable contribution to Black studies, as it focuses on Black joy rather than Black suffering. 5/5

Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way / Lao Tzu, rendered by Ursula Le Guin / 2019

I first discovered the Tao Te Ching through a poetic rendition of it in my local library in 8th grade. It was about the same time I discovered The Gospel of Thomas and The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom, two books that rattled my sense of self and the world. At the time, it provided me with a larger sense of meaning and spirituality when my then-Mormon worldview began to fray at the edges.

When I saw that literary powerhouse Ursula Le Guin had a rendition, I got my hands on it immediately. I worked my way through this book in the mornings and re-discovered some of the hardest earned lessons of my life, elucidated in pocket-sized stanzas in a language clear as water. They served as important reminders in a world constantly trying to distract us and convince us of other urgencies and priorities. Le Guin’s rendition is by far my favorite. It includes helpful—not distracting or pedantic—footnotes that help you wrestle with the meaning of the text. The notes includes critiques, etymologies, competing translations, Le Guin’s own wrestlings with the difficult language and sometimes obscure meaning.

Many of the translations of the Tao te Ching lose its humor, its fluidity and its clarity, reveling instead in obscurity and literalism. Le Guin makes Lao Tzu feel human. I recommend this book to everyone, especially martial artists, philosophers, the religious, and anyone going through traumatic experiences. 5/5

Letters to a Young Brown Girl / Barbara Jane Reyes / 2020

I was first introduced to Barbara Jane Reyes through Soleil David during my MFA program. I am incredibly indebted to her as Reyes is—or at least should be—one of the most important voices in poetry land, especially when it comes to women of color. Written mostly in prose poetry, Letters to a Young Brown Girl reads with the clarity and down-to-earth-ness of Yesika Salgado and the blade of Natalie Diaz in my opinion, a great marriage of staple content and razor sharp form. Anyone looking for music recommendations will be grateful to see a series of poems inspired by songs important to Reyes coming of age. If you are trying to raise a young woman que no se deja, with as much metaphor as passion in her eyes, you want to pass along this book. If you are trying to raise a human who honors the grit and wisdom of the women in their lives, pass along this book. While aimed at a younger audience, it is not without maturity and wisdom. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Filipinx literature, Asian studies, YA literature, and contemporary poetry. 3/5

Summerlost / Allie Condie / 2016

I should begin this quick review by admitting, I was very resistant to liking this book. It’s about Cedar City, a place where I worked overtime almost every week, basically had zero friends, was suffocated by whiteness and conservativism, and where I was incredibly lonely. Condie’s attempts to portray the place in a wistful, poetic, and even beautiful light were not welcomed by me!

Condie’s middle-grade novel covers the story of a young biracial (white and Asian) girl who has recently lost her father and younger brother to a car accident. Written in short, micro-fiction sized chapters, the book moves along quickly while somehow still capturing the smell-the-roses pace and atmosphere of life in rural Utah. Grief, especially at such a young age, is difficult to capture. Yet here, with tenderness, Condie renders the healing of a young girl, who finds ways to treasure and remember those she has lost, while developing new relationships and memories to push her forward. I'm also heartened—and I should say it, impressed!—to see the inclusion of a biracial Asian American character without letting racial issues subsume the rest of the book. The protagonist is a fully developed character and not merely a microcosm of larger race issues.

I recommend this book for everyone, especially 1) children dealing with grief and death, 2) white people trying to learn how to write POC characters, 3) people who need an easy read that will nurture and warm them and won’t demand your work brain to be on without sacrificing craft. This is a book you can cozy up to after a difficult day. 5/5

Appropriation: A Provocation / Paisley Rekdal / 2021

Writing about cultural appropriation usually makes me wanna pull my hair out. Even when I agree with the authors of the think pieces and hot takes, it’s a hard thing to talk about without sounding like you are too woke, foaming at the mouth, the champions of so-called “cancel culture.” Here, Paisley steps into these troubled waters with the grace of a dolphin who knows choreographed swimming routines. She manages to talk about these thorny issues with a clear-eyed precision, compassion, and without become belaboring. The fear of offending someone and clumsily crossing a line haunts many contemporary writers, so it is especially apt and touching to see this collection of essays written to an imaginary student, wrestling with insecurities and difficult subject material, who is asking for advice. This book should be required in every creative writing curriculum, and it should have been required decades ago. It would have saved many a young writer from the grief of muddling through these complicated issues on their own. It would have saved quite a few from getting their work trampled for sloppy renditions of cultures they didn’t know enough about.

I recommend this book to every creator, writer, and artist. It should be a staple of ethnic studies. It should win a grammy too. 5/5

Hood Criaturas / féi hernandez / 2020

féi deserves a spot in poetry right next to Danez Smith and Christopher Soto. Nonbinary, undocumented, and 100% magical, their debut collection of poems has an explosive use of form from the guttural anger of the prose poems “dontcomeformyhood” and “Brunch” to the slick quatrains of “When They Leave, a Pantoum.” While the collection deals with the very real traumas of PTSD and migration, it also celebrates and fights for its joy in poems like “first real nations of nations”. féi has so much soul and punch. I am grateful to get to peer into their light. I recommend this book to anyone interested in undocu literature, LGBTQ+ literature, Latinx literature, “political” poetry and contemporary poetry. 4/5

American Grief in Four Stages / Sadie Hoagland / 2019

14 stories in 155 pages, each with their own seductive sadness. I found myself sinking deeper into my seat, lowering into the sofa breathing this one in deep. These are inglorioIus struggles: a military veteran half-heartedly attempting to kindle a romantic relationship, a teenager trying to make sense of the suicide of his bright and popular little brother. The only reason I’m not giving this five out of five is because a few stories didn’t jump as high as the others, including “Fucking Aztecs” which repeats unfortunate stereotypes about natives. I especially dug stories like "Dementia, 1692”, which takes us back to witch hunts in Puritan America with a glass melting rhythm and sorrow. I recommend this collection to anyone interested in short fiction. 3.5/5

The Beethoven Sequence / Gerald Elias / 2020

I didn’t finish this political thriller. I stopped on this passage and realized all my suspicions that The Beethoven Sequence was, in fact, a bad book, and not simply a book that I wasn’t really interested were true. I especially hated that this book used the really politically fraught story of a man falsely accused of sexual violence as a mere plot device. Here is the passage that made me finally give up on reading, admittedly a couple of hundred pages too late:

“I’ve got this Mr. Clean fantasy,” she says, kissing the top of his head. “I have this thing about bald men. Have I ever mentioned that?”

“Even bald sex offenders?”

“They’re the best kind.”

His hand is inside her bathrobe, and he stands up to make it easier for her to find his zipper. He hasn’t been with a woman since the nightmare started eleven years before. Before his wife left him. Before he spent nine lonely years in prison. He can’t wait any longer. He presses his mouth against hers and she presses back. He pins her on her back on the kitchen table. She tears at his jeans and underpants and grasps his penis, pulling it insider her. He unties her robe and squeezes her breasts, hard. Eyes closed and her head back, she supports herself on her elbows, wrapping her legs around Whitmore’s waist. Her right hand falls into Whitmore’s dinner plate. As he presses into her, she grabs a handful of potato salad and coleslaw and smears it over his face and stuffs it into his mouth. Covering his lips with hers, the two of them tongue the food back and forth from one mouth to the other.

“You like chicken?” she whispers as she licks his face.

“What kind of question is that?” he pants. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“Good. Me, too.”

Feeling behind her for the remains of a chicken drumstick, she clutches it and slowly slides it into and then out of his mouth, as far as it will go, both of them licking at it, sucking on it. She wraps an arm around his neck as he rides her, his body spasming out of control. His wraps his arms around her back, pulling her toward him. He wants it to go on forever, but it has been such a long time. He shudders as he empties himself into her. He sinks onto her chest, panting, laughing, and crying at the same time.

“House confinement has its rewards,” he says, when his breath returns.”

I don’t recommend this book. 0/5

Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype / Clarissa Pinkola Estés / 1989 & Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men / James Sollis / 1994

I read Women Who Run With Wolves because it was recommended to me my many women of color in my life and even my therapist. I read Under Saturn’s Shadow, similarly, because men of color close to me found this title powerful. Both these books strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. Namely, they both essentialize and flatten men and women a tad bit too much to fit into the archetypes they are interested in. As someone whose gender identity and expression doesn’t fit neatly into femininity or masculinity, I struggled a lot to see myself in either book, although I felt pieces of both deep inside me. Women Who Run With Wolves is especially for women who have had to repress themselves under the pressure of racism and patriarchy. Under Saturn’s Shadow is especially for men with a lack of father figures in their lives. Both have deep poetic moments that will sweep you off your feet—it just might not be the norm. If you aren’t into Freudian and Jungian psychology, these probably aren’t for you. I give both 2.5/5.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise / Gene Luen Yang / 2012

I stepped into the Avatar comic series tentatively. I read them for free online, even watched a couple dubbed on YouTube. At the time, I was dreadfully depressed and needed something to just get me to the next day. So I binged, escaping into the world of Avatar. I was impressed by how good the comics are! It’s hard to keep the integrity of such a beloved and masteful series, but Gene Luen Yang pulls it off! Here tensions between Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko emerge as Zuko begins to negotiate with the Earth Kingdom over colonized lands. The plot creates a powerful snapshot of some of the complex cultural mixing that happen during colonization and lived up to my hopes and dreams for the series. I recommend this to all youth and anyone interested in children’s literature. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search / Gene Luen Yang / 2013

One of the greatest mysteries in the Avatar series is what happens to Zuko’s mom. This comic rewards fans’ patience and curiosity and doesn’t fail to deliver a powerful, coherent story, covering this important mystery in Avatar lore, doing a great job of capturing the struggles of women in oppressive marriages. I recommend this to all youth and anyone interested in children’s literature. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Rift / Gene Luen Yang / 2014

This comic is especially good for talking with children about the complications of modernization and the importance of environmental stewardship. Avatar Aang fails to create balance in this issue, prioritizing friendships over peace between humans and spirits. This is a fraught decision, and Yang handles it well. 4/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Smoke and Shadow / Gene Luen Yang / 2015

This comic rewards us with the return of our favorite villain Azula, and she is somehow even more mad, reckless, and bone-chilling. She goes to ghastly extremes to disrupt Zuko’s reign in this one. Zuko learns hard lessons about the dark side of power and the importance of freedom. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender: North and South / Gene Luen Yang / 2016

This series is especially good for talking about intracultural colonization and conflict. Katara and Sokka have to navigate not only coming from a defeated culture whose knowledge has largely been destroyed by war, but also trying to figure out power dynamics with sister tribes with more power. It is a little heavy on the politicking in my opinion, but a decent contribution the Avatar world 3/5

The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars / Michael Dante DiMartino / 2017

Again, I was impressed by how they sustained the integrity and the feel of the TV series. So, I enjoyed and was annoyed by all the same aspects of the comics as I was of the TV series. That said, I deeply enjoyed the way the series navigated the Korra and Asami’s lesbian relationship, creating believable conflict in a supportive family. The new villain is a logical outcome of the spirit world intermingling with the human world. 3/5

The Legend of Korra: Ruins of Empire / Michael Dante DiMartino / 2019

Here, DiMartino tries to create a redemption arc for Kuvira and deals with election stealing. It may have been the less-than-graceful attempts to reconcile Kuvira’s crimes and create a transformed character. It may have been the fact I was reading this alongside endless news about the US election. But this one had me as dissatisfied with it as I was with the Kuvira arc. 2/5

Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal / Ben Sasse / 2018

As I live in a red state, I follow conservative Reddit, am a registered Republican, and now read conservative books to try to understand how to best do cultural and social justice work in this state. Sasse is an interesting figure in the Republican party, voting to impeach Trump but otherwise your run-of-the-mill small-town Republican with a love of pickup trucks, fear of porn, and belief in small governments. I profoundly disagree with Sasse’s romanticization of US history. In one passage, for example, he strains, arguing that the US is exceptional for abolishing slavery, ignoring the fact that plenty of Latin American and European countries abolished slavery before us. Abolishing slavery is a low standard for “exceptional” behavior and even in the scheme of the rest of the world, we were mediocre at best. If you can get past the warped and idealized renditions of US history and tearful patriotism on occasion, you might feel the empathy Sasse has for people navigating the digital revolution and the love he has for community building. Sasse might get a little preachy about building an authentic meaningful work and family life and about avoiding the toxicities of social media, but the majority of Sasse’s observations are hard to disagree with. I recommend this book to anyone trying to understand contemporary US conservatism and contemporary American politics. 2/5

The Only Good Indians / Stephen Graham Jones / 2020

I fell in love with Stephen Graham Jones when I first read Mapping the Interior last February. Jones is literary without pretension, popular for his horror and fantasy that draws heavily on Native lore, social issues, and intergenerational trauma. In the first story, racism is just as threatening of a force as the fantasy monster, as he is chased by both bigoted white men and an elk-monster. In general, his characters are Native men at various levels of stuckness, trying and failing to gain a better grip on their social and economic circumstances. It’s absolutely chilling to see some of them descend into madness, narrated in a brilliantly eerie voice and turn. His characters speak like real people of color, swearing, throwing shade on white folk, and navigating fraught cultural heritages. I recommend this book to anyone interested in horror, fantasy, Native literature, and fiction. 4/5

Calvin and Hobbes: Volume 1 / Bill Watterson / 1987

My partner bought me this book for Christmas because I never really read Calvin and Hobbes much and the comic strip was an important part of her childhood and is a fundamental part of her humor. While these comics didn’t often make me laugh out loud, they are incredibly charming. I particularly enjoyed watching how the comics played with gender, sometimes even subverting some masculine expectations for a tickle. C&H is wholesome, pure playfulness is a world that seems to very interesting versions of that. 4/5

Homegoing / Yaa Gyasi / 2016

Following a well-worn path in Black literature, this novel covers the story of a family in a Ghanaian village, eventually torn apart by the slave trade. It alternates the perspectives of the family left behind in Ghana, as well as the part of the family that will become African American and carries us all the way to the present. I especially appreciated the African portions of the novel, as they traced less familiar terrain (to me), including 1) the story of family that did business in the slave trade and the conflict it created between relatives 2) the story of a queer son in Ghana, navigating African leadership and social pressures of the slave era, and 3) the story of a woman condemned for witchcraft and the death of her child. Deeply lyric and wounding, Gyasi’s writing is carefully carved, chiseled sharp and penetrating. I recommend this book to anyone interested in multiple perspectives in fiction, stories about intergenerational trauma, and Black literature. 4/5

My Woman Card is Anti-Native and Other Two Spirit Truths / Petrona Xemi Tapepechul / 2016

A transgender woman, language worker, actor, poet, playwright, model, and the Artistic Director of Angel Rose Artist Collective, Petrona Xemi Tapepechul is a beauty and joy we don’t deserve. She works with ANIS to preserve the Nawat language in Central America. This collection centers on identity development, especially in fraught politicized contexts. You can critique it for its bluntness, use of form, and the centering of its stanzas, but if you’re reading it for polished literary craft, you’re here for the wrong reasons. This is an enunciation of self, creating space in a world trying to kill you, and doing it with finesse. Xemi is a force. 3/5

Terroir: Love out of Place / Natasha Sajé / 2020

I should start this off by saying I am absolutely the worst person to review this book. Natasha Sajé has been my mentor, former professor, letter of recommend writer, and has—like any teacher—shaped me for better and worse. As a young slam poet, I troubled her office hours with my dreams of becoming a great writer, and she carefully, albeit brutally honestly, provided me with feedback, excellent opportunities, and a place to work out my relationship with writing. I got my feelings hurt a couple of times, some of which I blame on my own arrogance and naivete, and other times due to my own frustrations that Natasha was not the hip-hop-fluent, Spanish-speaking, Central American mentor I really wanted. Our relationship has evolved from one of student-teacher, to colleague-colleague in some ways. I would not be anywhere near where I am today without Natasha, and I’m indebted and grateful for her mentorship. Needless to say, however, our relationship is rich and complex.

As much as I got a small window into her academic presence and felt like I knew her, I knew extremely little about her life and what shaped her. My first year of grad school I read a short essay by Natasha online and was stunned to learn that Natasha was once married to a Black man and that he died tragically and that I likely first met her when she was in the throes of her mourning.

Terroir is an uncomfortable book for many reasons. It deals with the grief of losing her husband and her journey of growth as a white person on racial issues. There are some sticky moments, as when describing her father’s racism, Sajé writes out the N-word, among other slurs her father used. She describes people of color using the clichés of chocolate and food. And while I’m sure that there are a number of moments in the book that will make some people of color cringe, its value comes in Sajé’s willingness to be vulnerable and acknowledging her past mistakes. This is hard work, but as far as white people processing race issues goes, it’s a worthwhile effort.

My favorite parts of the book were the bits that described her queer coming-of-age and her lesbian marriage. Natasha did a great job capturing the beauty of her relationships, whether its with her late husband, current partner, or childhood caregiver. I recommend this book for anyone interested in reading up about relationships, memoirs, and white perspectives on racial issues. 2/5

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA / Luis Rodriguez / 1993

A predecessor to Unforgetting above, Always Running tells the gritty tale of Luis Rodriguez’s turbulent coming-of-age, including the sex, drugs, gang life, and racism he experienced as a kid. It serves as a powerful map of his way out violent behavior, including the social and school programs that provided important outlets and space for Latinx youth to process issues important to their lives. Always Running includes a fiery argument in favor of ethnic studies courses in high school and the importance for youth of color to see themselves represented. Rodriguez highlights the young women who led his high school activism and the young girlfriends that were good influences on his life.

This book broke into my soul. It covers race riots, murders, drug addiction, the too often unacknowledged scars communities of color suffer generation after generation. It is a required read in LA county I heard, and it should be a required read everywhere in North America. 5/5

The Shadow of Kyoshi / F. C. Yee / 2020

Kyoshi’s conflict with Kuruk, her efforts to create effective change rather than petty vigilante justice, and her conflict with Yun create a tense path for her to follow. While I’m usually not a fan of the politic heavy aspects of certain Avatar storylines, Yee manages to make them interesting by portraying them through Kyoshi’s unique perspective as an orphan turned Avatar and her general clumsiness as Avatar. We get to share her frustration and confusion at the elaborate social rituals of the Fire nation for example. This book was the entertaining, adventurous, emotional read I was hoping for. I recommend it to anyone interested in Fantasy, Asian literature, LGBTQ+ relationships in literature, martial arts, and YA lit.

Disparates / Patrick Madden / 2020

in Disparates, Provo Writer Patrick Madden is purposefully frivolous, tacking in his essays tangential musings whose charm is found in their quirkiness, their dorkiness. This can be really tickling and clever if you are into the vibe, but in general they are the dad jokes of an erudite English professor. I recommend this to anyone interested in seeing the range of forms used in contemporary non-fiction essays. 2/5

Memorias from the Beltway / Mauricio Novoa / 2020

This is a hard-hitting poetry collection with lines that will dagger and snipe like a battle rapper. An heir to the styles of John Murillo and Quique Aviles, Mauricio Novoa reps DC Salvis well. With references to Romero and Roque, poems that are raps with an easygoing fluency in rhyme, this book is everything I love about poetry. Here, Novoa writes about his upbringing in the Beltway, rapping about basketball, police violence, poverty, yes, but also touching poems about his father’s tenderness on Novoa’s first day of school or “Muthafuckin’ Trees,” which is a city boy’s ode to nature. I’m especially grateful for this gift and look forward to tracing Novoa’s sure to be exciting literary career. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Salvi lit, Central American lit, Hip-hop, contemporary poetry, rhyme, and men of color. 5/5

Crooked Hallelujahs / Kelli Jo Ford / 2020

Crooked Hallelujahs / Kelli Jo Ford / 2020

Crooked Hallelujahs will drip down your throat slow and hot as a whole bottle of whiskey. Kelli Jo Ford’s loving depictions of her characters may not make the challenges they face burn any less, but it does give the novel a heartrending pulse that will keep you invested in their lives. The novel follows three generations of Cherokee women in Oklahoma and other parts of rural America. Each character has suffered enough for an opera of their own. But amid the fights, heartbreaks, and attacks, the women find ways to tether themselves to one another and the future.

There are a couple of things the novel portrays exceptionally effectively:

1) Christianity - Lula, the grandmother in the family, fills the house with a haunted Holy Ghost. The poisoning aspects of conservative Christian culture choke her daughters with expectations of docile, submissiveness and repress their desires and dreams. It’s impossible to understand the history of the Americas without understanding the colonial violence of Christianity on indigenous communities. Crooked Hallelujah captures the ways this form of colonial violence still shapes and warps families. For me, at least, this portrayal helped make this violence less abstract and more concrete and real.

2) Rural life and class — Like the characters of Rebecca Clarren’s Kickdown, the characters of Crooked Hallelujah are beleaguered by broken dreams: the lack of economic opportunities, failed romantic relationships, victimhood, and so forth. Hard work is a given in the novel and not romanticized.

3) Environmental Issues - Several moments in the novel highlight environmental issues faced in rural communities, especially the last chapter, where the effects of climate change are read as a literal apocalypse by Lula. For an altogether slow-paced (slow-paced is not the same as boring!) novel, it ends with an adrenaline pumping bang!

I recommend this book to anyone interested in multiple perspective storytelling, Native literature, feminist literature, and environmental literature.

A History of Kindness by Linda Hogan / 2020

Coming in at a whopping 137 pages of poetry, Linda Hogan’s latest collection A History of Kindness looks like a daunting read. Any expectation of density or convolution that contemporary poetry is notorious for swiftly fades away as your ear rests on the clarity and cadence of Hogan’s words. In many ways, A History of Kindness feels like a majestic book, both in its length and its sweeping perspective. Hogan’s words are laden with a history that gives monumental weight to the simplest of images. In “We Used to Have Pearls,” look at how much meaning is given to pearls in the first three stanzas:

I once asked Old Mother what became of the pearls / that decorated our oldest roofs.

She said the Spanish stole them in bags too heavy / to carry. Some of our pearls spilled over.

But in truth it was their own souls they carried. / No longer did they shine.

In three short stanzas, we get an images of ancient ancestral pearls, the historic trauma of conquest, and a reinterpretation of what humanity and dignity mean in the face of loss and defeat. The Chickasaw kept their souls through their defeat, the Spanish did not in their victory.

Hogan’s words find strength in softness. Whether remembering a joyful moment wading in the water with loved ones (as in “Recuerdo”) or interrogating the moment when a police officer kills yet another Black man (as in “Tulsa”), Hogan asks the reader to slow down, to embrace the pace of her line breaks, all of which break on moments of breath at logical points in the sentence. In contrast to the explosive bombast of Natalie Diaz’s work, Hogan’s poetry isn’t pretentious or enamored with its own form.

Hogan’s documentation of the kindness, that of loved ones and animals, is a much needed medicine for the present moment. In a time dominated by grief, illness, chaos, confrontation, and catastrophe, Hogan reminds of not just of the sacrifices and strength of our ancestors, but also their joy and love for life. In her poem “A Need for Happiness,” Hogan shifts from describing the havoc wreaked by Buffalo Bill, the trauma of starvation and the near extinction of buffalo, to remembering “Those great leaders, even with grief, / they laughed together at night / when the light-bearded man left. / They talked and laughed together. // They still loved life, / so why don’t you?”

This book held me through many days when I needed an embrace to hold back the hopelessness and fatalism. I worked my way through this book slowly, much slower than I usually read poetry books, which is voraciously. There is a spaciousness to Hogan’s language, a matriarchal authority in her voice, that can’t be crafted, only gifted after years of wonder and worse.

I recommend this book for fans of Ada Limon, Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, and Alberto Rios. I recommend it to those interested in Native American literature, environmental literature, and contemporary poetics.

The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History / Darren Parry / 2019

Did you know that the largest massacre of Native Americans in the United States happened in Idaho? If you, like me, answered no to that question, you should pick up The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History by Darren Parry. This book is a palpable act of love and an attempt to heal a Utah still suffering from the aftermath of this massacre.

Parry begins with a chapter about his grandmother Mae Timbimboo Parry, a Shoshone historian who instilled in young Darren the importance of their cultural heritage and implanted in him the stories he shares in this book. Those wanting a critical scholarly historiography of the events should turn elsewhere. Parry’s style is much more akin to a testimony meeting than an academic essay. A six-generation Shoshone-Latter-Day-Saint, his particular perspective is both a boon and a burden to the narrative. It provides an intimacy with the material and a moral authority very few can deliver. At times, however, Parry’s own gentleness and Christlike turning of the other cheek is suffocating to someone as young and angry as me. My suspicion is that this gentleness is perfect for coaxing the fragility of non-natives and conservatives, as they grapple with the blatant injustice experienced by the Shoshone. Published by Common Consent Press, a non-profit publisher dedicated to producing affordable, high-quality books that help define and shape the Latter-day Saint experience, I hope the book finds an audience of non-native latter-day-saints ready to wrestle with the legacy of white supremacy and settler colonialism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. The book is extraordinarily kind to the non-native (or culturally assimilated native) reader, providing a whole chapter on what amounts to Shoshone anthropology. As a bonus at the end, Parry even includes his grandmother’s notes on traditional Shoshone food sources and uses, complete with handwritten descriptions and drawings of plants! The book strives to not just provide readers with a historical account of the Bear River Massacre, but an overview of the plight and condition of the Northwestern Shoshone. I would compare it most to The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois in that regard. Teachers, please, this book is begging to be used as an educational text!

A hunter-gatherer civilization, the Northwestern Shoshone were largely peaceful in their interactions with the encroaching latter-day-saint settlers. Scuffles between other Shoshones/native peoples and the white settlers, however, blew back on the Northwestern Shoshone, including a November 25, 1863 attack that left two Natives and two white men dead, which served as a pretense for the massacre because racist white people can’t tell people of color apart. Even the gun-shy, Darren Parry notes, “Again, the Indian men involved were not from the Northwestern Band, but to the white authorities and settlers, Indians were Indians, and there was not much inclination to distinguish between the local Natives and those from other bands” (42). This attack, among others, led Patrick Edward Connor to eventually massacre at least 400 of the men, women, and children of the Northwestern Shoshone. Connor was a Northern commander in the Civil War sent to Utah to “protect overland routes from attacks by the Indians and quell a possible Mormon uprising” (35). Parry gives the impression that Connor was restless, eager to put his skills to use subduing Southern rebels, rather than “babysitting” the latter-day-saints. Whatever the case, because of Connor, Parry and his people were raised with stories of the massacre, of family members escaping by ingenious methods, of babies suffocated to prevent giving away their location, of many other heartrending tales Parry graciously provides.

Following the devastation of the massacre, Chief Sagwitch chooses to attempt to assimilate his people into the latter-day-saint way of life. Parry closely follows the perspective of Chief Sagwitch, the Shoshone chief responsible for converting most of his community to the LDS faith and bridging the cultural divide between latter-day-saints and Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. So the story goes, Sagwitch received the revelation that:

“There was a time when our Father who lived above the clouds loved our fathers who lived long ago. His face shone bright upon them and their skins were white like the white man. Then they were wise and wrote books and the Father above the clouds talked with them. But after a while our people would not hear him and they quarreled and stole and fought until the Great Father got mad and turned his back on them. By doing this, He caused a shade to come over them and their skins turned black. And now we cannot see as the white man sees, because the Great Fathers face is towards him and His back is towards us. But after a while, the Great Father will quit being mad and He will turn his face towards us. Then our skins will become white.” (58-59)

Parry offers this story with surprisingly little commentary to unpack the internalized racism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy in this revelation, other than pointing out that this story fits cleanly with others from the Book of Mormon. I’m not sure what to do with this positionality yet. It is clear from Parry’s accounting that there were other voices in the Northwestern Shoshone community that felt like the Book of Mormon was only for white men (58), but their perspectives are marginalized in the text. Surely, there must be another path to the Northwestern Shoshone to remain faithful to their chosen latter-day-saint faith and still reckon with the racist attitudes of their forefathers. Thanks to Sagwitch’s leadership, however, most of the Northwestern Shoshone converted to mormonism, even if the syncretized their practices, as is common with many natives who converted to some form of Christianity.

What followed were several collaborations by native and white latter-day-saints to build a native settlement, working hard to convert a hunter-gatherer culture to an agricultural one. There are many obvious challenges to this, one of which seems to be the mismanagement by white leaders of their settlements. Parry notes that “often the Indians were only paid through food and supplies,” which usually is referred to as slavery (74). For many reasons, these settlements largely failed, harboring resentment in native communities. Despite that, natives still donated over 1000 hours to the building of the Logan temple, a fact Parry belabors in the book, and eventually built a successful community in Washakie.

In Washakie, however, the Northwestern Shoshone faced another monumental setback as after a while white latter-day-saints received orders to burn down the houses of their native neighbors while they were gone visiting family or running other errands. In the appendices, Parry includes the testimonies of many natives who lost their property, including sacred belongings in the fire. These acts of arson form another psychic wound on the Shoshone imagination that informs their current positions and outlooks.

As Parry narrates how these histories impact the present, he balances holding the church accountable with being optimistic about the ways assimilation has impacted his people. On one hand, he states, “things cannot be made right, although we should continue to [try]” (89). Lines like these show his understanding of how acute and permanent some of the damage has been. On the the other hand, he states, “Through assimilation, we have been blessed.” This quote follows another anti-black quote about God making native skins dark because of their sin (90).

My own indigenous Salvadoran ancestors likely took the route of cultural assimilation as well, after La Matanza of 1932, where over 30,000 indigenous peasants were massacred. After the killings, indigenous peoples frequently abandoned their traditional ways of dressing and their language. The pain of these massacres is still palpable in the Salvadoran cultural imagination and is one of the many factors leading to the Salvadoran Civil War. I mention this because I want to be clear in stating that I am not judging Sagwitch or his community for making the decisions they needed to in order to survive. The duty of the surviving generation, however, is to heal and reckon with the full weight of the past. The Bear River Massacre is a great first step in that direction that will hopefully open the door to more radical and diverse perspectives within the Native community.

On page 53, Parry includes (and critiques) the text of a plaque that still stands in Franklin County monument site that reads, “Attacks by the Indians on the peaceful inhabitants of this vicinity led to the final battle here on January 29, 1863….” Such a disgusting revision of history still lives in many Utah schools and communities. May Perry’s book bring us a step closer to listening to the voices of those murdered that January day.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in Native American history, American history, and creative non-fiction.

Savage Conversations / LeAnne Howe / 2019

Savage Conversations by LeAnne Howe is a historical and psychological dive into the mind of former first lady Mary Lincoln. Turns out she ended her life in an insane asylum, the Bellevue Place Sanitarium, for “nervous derangement and fever in her head.” In particular, she reported repeated visitations by an Indian who “[slit her] eyelids and [sewed] them open, always removing the wires by dawn’s first light.” The apparition of an Indian figure is significant, because years earlier in 1862, Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution of thirty-eight Dakota martyrs for participating in the Dakota War against white settlers “who had first stolen their lands, then their rations, and raped their women.” As a Choctaw writer, Howe immediately connected the dots between Mary’s hallucinations and her husband’s war crimes. This explosive inspiration led Howe to pen a slick, acerbic 104 page—er—play? poetry collection?

Formally, the text is written like a play—in scenes, that is, complete with characters and stage directions. The micro-scenes come in rapid fire succession, rarely lasting more than two pages, sometimes not lasting more than one line. There are three characters: Mary Todd Lincoln, the Savage Indian, and The Rope. Throughout the play, the audience watches Mary poetically bemoan her situation, hiss about her son’s betrayal (he testified against her), weep for her husband, and contemplate her isolation. The Savage Indian, the ghost of one of the thirty-eight men martyred that fateful day, retorts, scalping Mary, contemplating the condition of his people, and singing songs of healing. In that fraught and sparking tension between Mary and the Savage Indian, one finds heartbreaking passages about loneliness, incisive commentary on contemporary police brutality, and more.

Howe did a marvelous job conceptually and formally executing this incendiary material. Her work makes visible the presence, indeed even the prominence, of Native Americans through traditionally white-washed versions of history. Abraham Lincoln is celebrated for freeing enslaved African-Americans, but his massacre of the Dakota is rarely noted in traditional educational settings. In Savage Conversations, Howe shines light on this suppressed moment in history, indicting Abraham Lincoln through his wife’s tormented conscience.

I recommend this book to people interested in drama, poetry, form, American history, Native American literature, and ethnic studies.

The Marrow Thieves / Cherie Dimaline / 2017

As the line between realist fiction and dystopia becomes blurrier and blurrier, it is natural for writers to turn to dystopia and science fiction to analyze the present. Every people has their catastrophes, but few are as apocalyptic as the histories of our first nations. I was eager to read The Marrow Thieves for that reason. I wanted to see what a skilled Native American fiction writer would do with the tropes of dystopia and science fiction.

The premise of The Marrow Thieves is simple and magnetic: climate change has nearly destroyed the world and everybody but native people have lost the power to dream. Government forces have turned to harvesting natives’ bone marrow and natives everywhere are either on the run or collaborating with government forces. The novel begins with an epigraph from The Road by Cormac McCarthy, an obvious model and inspiration for Dimaline, as The Marrow Thieves follows a ragtag group of native youth under the leadership of their elders, an elderly woman named Minerva and a gay man named Miig, all of whom scavenge and trudge their way through a wasteland of abandoned cities and wildernesses, avoiding strangers and heading toward the ever mythical North, where they hear they will be safe from the bone-harvesting white people. The action in the tale picks up rather quick, as the first scenes narrate the kidnapping of Mitch, the brother of our protagonist, Frenchie by government forces.

If the metaphor of white people stealing dreams from native peoples seems heavy-handed, perhaps it is. I have no problem with it because it’s too true to resist.

One of the things I appreciate most about The Marrow Thieves is for its unabashed lingering on moments of joy, no matter how temporary. Take the opening lines of the book, for example: “Mitch was smiling so big his back teeth shone in the soft light of the solar-powered lamp we’d scavenged from someone’s shed. ‘Check it out.’ He held a bag of Doritos between us — a big bag, too.” This opener rejects the oft-repeated dictum that writers ought to begin their stories immediately with conflict. Instead, Dimaline grounds us in the wholesome and juvenile joy of Doritos. Elsewhere, the tender joys of adolescent love make Frenchie wisely wonder, “How could anything be as bad as it was when this moment existed in the span of eternity? How could i have fear when this girl would allow me this close? How could anything matter but this small miracle of having someone I could love?” During times as revolting and fatalistic as now, this gem can provide much needed comfort to those whipped and whittled by today’s challenges.

At the same time, the traumas in this story are not easily overcome. One of my favorite moments, indeed, one of the most skillfully wrought moments is a scene where a member of their group rediscovers a long-lost family member. Although the reunion is joyous, it’s also incredibly painful and continues to be, as the characters process their grief and loss.

Though the story mainly follows Frenchie, it is narrated in a shifting first-person perspective and includes first-person narration from Miig and Wab. Miig’s portions especially read like oral histories, shared around a hearth, filled with encouraging histories of native resilience to inspire the youngsters to keep on pushing. Here, I did wish Dimaline would have done more to differentiate her characters’ voices, but at least on a content level, I have nothing to complain about. In time, I began to grow close to the cast of characters, turning pages easily and churning my teeth with anticipation.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in YA literature, Native literature, science fiction, and dystopia.