Last time, I wrote about three books by Indigenous writers (three prior, four before that), and today I’m writing about three more: a work of art and history, a memoir, and a novel. Carey Newman and Kirstie Hudson’s Picking up the Pieces: Residential School Memories and the Making of
It occurred to me to keep The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu as a novella for November. But when I was rushing to leave the house one afternoon, and returned because I’d forgotten my wallet, I slipped TEoKN into my bag on a whim. So, naturally that’s what I read
Last week, there was talk of Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, an illustrated book by Spokane-Coeur d'Alene writer Sherman Alexie, and the anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold showcasing a variety of Indigenous storytellers and artists. Now: a novel, a book of creation stories, a children’s book, and a memoir
Elissa Washuta’s White Magic (2021) is a personal narrative of searching and locating boundaries about her own self amid the context of colonization. (She is a member of the Cowlitz tribe.) Her writing is considered experimental but it passes for conventional prose at first glance; much of her
From the opening lines of Five Little Indians, debut author Michelle Good prepares readers. There are snares and ghosts, silvery and summery glimmers, and there is also warmth. (There’s also the requisite discussion of semantics—‘Indian’ or ‘Aboriginal’—reminding readers that nomenclature and self-identification is not a matter of consensus in
