Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Cynthia Leitich Smith "Rain Is Not My Indian Name" - 5/5

After Rain's best friend Galen dies, she shuts herself off from the world for six months, until she unwillingly gets involved in the Indian Camp her aunt's running that summer. For such a short book (it's not even 150 pages long) this is about a whole lot of things, though probably the two main themes are small town life and what it means to be Indian.

I picked this up pretty much based on the title alone, which just sounded really awesome. As I started reading, my first thought was oh, this is too teenagery for me, but I quickly changed my mind. It's definitely a young adult book, but I really enjoyed it a lot.

One thing I particularly liked, which was just a little characterisation detail, not any part of the plot itself, was that she's a fan and reads fanfic. I think this is the first book I've ever read with a protagonist who reads fic! And it's obvious the author knows what she's talking about, too.

# 31 - Yami: The Autobiography of Yami Lester

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

# 31 - Yami: The Autobiography of Yami Lester (1993)

This autobiography details a remarkable life. I found his experiences really inspirational.

Yami Lester was born in the Western Desert. He grew up in camps, leading a traditional life style and then became a stockman.

When he was a child a strange black mist blew over the camp - which was upwind from the Maralinga nuclear testing grounds. He got an eye infection and later, as an adult, went blind.

He was sent to a hospital in Adelaide and his description of what happened there is understated but horrible. He couldn't speak English. He didn't know what was wrong with him. They removed his one good eye and he never found out why. And can I say again, he couldn't communicate with anyone around him.

He eventually learned English and went to an institute for the blind where he made brooms. This sounds like soul destroying work, but after years there he got work as an interpreter into his own Western Desert tongue and moved back to the lands with his wife and children.

He has been involved in Western Desert improvement movements and the Royal Commission into the Maralinga testing (which included an examination of whether or not proper care was taken to remove Aboriginal people from the area and a discussion of who was to clean up the still toxic remains in the middle of the Western Desert lands).

I was particularly interested in this autobiography as one of my mother's first jobs as a nurse in the 1960s was in a TB hospital. Two men were sent in from the central desert and they didn't speak a word of English. The poor men had no idea why they had been sent there; they had no way of communicating with the nurses; they spent the days sitting under the tree in the garden; they had never slept in beds before; they had never been away from their lands before. Imagine it. She said she felt terrible for them - the only mitigating factors were that they had each other and they both got better and sent back to their home lands. I really hope their stories ended as well as Yami's.

Luci Tapahonso, Jacqueline Woodson

[mizchalmers.livejournal.com]

21. Luci Tapahonso, Blue Horses Rush In

No one could have told me that growing older would be this way: that children would turn on parents and disappear into gritty border towns, or run the abandoned downtown streets of Denver or Phoenix; that families could split into hardened circles over one sentence uttered in anger; that sons and daughters would leave with friends for Europe or New York; that they would leave for boot camp, or a college where they are one of five Indian students, and that parents would not know all they endured.

This is a book of poetry and prose with the coherence and resonance of a novel. I came away from Blue Horses Rush In feeling that I had just been to visit family; had been welcomed into a circle by a fire and included in storytelling that linked brother to sister, mother and father to son and daughter, cousin to cousin to the nth degree. Originally from Shiprock, New Mexico, and now teaching at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Tapahonso is great on food - cornbread and fry bread and savory mutton stew - and good on landscape - the San Francisco mountains veined with snow under rich stars, the sweeping highway traffic. And she is wonderful, pitch-perfect, on family stories. She is careful to disclaim in her preface that the narrative "I" does not always refer to her, which is a relief, as the everyday tragedies described here should not be piled on any one person. What is sobering, though, is that they are drawn from life, meaning that each of them has fallen on someone. So as not to overwhelm, Tapahonso is careful, too, to balance raw grief with the small daily pleasures of love.

Her name is She-Who-Brings-Happiness because upon being carried,
she instinctively settles into the warmth
of your shoulder and neck.
She nestles, like a little bird, into the contours of your body.
All you can say is, "She's so sweet, I don't know what to do."

22. Jacqueline Woodson, If You Come Softly

sanguinity was kind enough to recommend Woodson when I had a minor temper tantrum over some didactic and unsubtle Young Adult fiction I'd been ploughing through. There could not be a better antidote. If You Come Softly can't be accused of shying away from issues; its substance, essentially Jewish and black relations, is little short of incendiary.

"I don't like white guys with locks. I mean - it's just so obviously an appropriation -"
"He's black, Anne."
She didn't say anything. I could feel the air between us getting weird. Maybe a minute passed. Maybe two.
"Really?"
"No," I said, growing annoyed. "I'm lying."

Anne is Ellie's favourite sister, a San Francisco lesbian and generally a likeable character; but from this point Ellie barely speaks to her again. Woodson's characters are complicated and contradictory. Their problems are real and frightening.

Once when he was about ten, he had torn away from his father and taken off down Madison Avenue. When his father caught up to him, he grabbed Miah's shoulder. Don't you ever run in a white neighborhood, he'd whispered fiercely, tears in his eyes. Then he had pulled Miah toward him and held him. Ever.

The accommodations they come to are compromises, at best. And yet they're neither saints nor devils. They're people, muddling through an imperfect world. And at moments you can feel the warmth of their breath, the bass of their pulse.

Then he asked me if I ever forgot I was white.
Sometimes, I said.
And when you're forgetting, what color are you?
No color.
Then Miah looked away from me and said, We're different that way.

What did Barthes call it? Punctum. That moment when a fictional character glances out of the book at you and casually stabs you in the heart.