Three Children's Books About Native Identity

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9. Cheryl Savageau, Muskrat Will Be Swimming.

The kids at school call us Lake Rats. And the place where we live, down by the lake's shore, they call shanty town. People atthe lake live in cellar holes, trailers, and old winterized cottages from when the lake was a vacation spot for people with money. Now the lake is too crowded for vacationers. Now it's where we live.

I love the lake. I love the green, froggy smell of the pond out behind the dam. I love walking the shoreline every spring, watching for pollywogs. I love swimming in the strong, clean current at the point. I love fishing in the rain on early April mornings and sunny August afternoons. I love skating out past the islands in January, with stars thick over my head. But I don't like being called Lake Rat.

I loved this all to pieces. Jeannie and her grandfather talking, him helping her untangle the meanings of what the kids call her, helping her find a way to reconcile the town kids' derision and her love of the lake and her family, him expressing his deep love of her and his trust of her desires and judgement. The instant I hit the end I went back to the beginning again. And then, before flipping back to the beginning again, I went to find someone to read it to.

Many thanks to Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature for recommending it!


10. Simon Ortiz, The People Shall Continue.

This is very much a teaching book, outlining a thousand years of Native history in a mere twenty pages, and ending with a call to unite with other people of color, as well as poor white people.

There's a lot that I like here: Native history doesn't begin in 1492, for example, nor does it stop with the Indian wars. Even as Ortiz refers to all indigenous Americans as "the People", he emphasizes the diversity of Native cultures. While many major historical events are referenced in just a few words (and thus, this book would never be able to teach a kid those thousand years of history -- but why should it have to do that on its own?), it provides a continuous Native-centric view of the broad sweep of North American history, as well as a decent list of things to go find out about, if you don't already know. Additionally, there is a strong emphasis on the continuity of Indian identities, even in the face of boarding schools, termination, and relocation.

About the only reservation I have about the book: it positively reeks of 1977, its original publication date, which may or may not be a sticking point for any given reader. (Personally: oh, but I wish someone had put this book in my hot little hands in 1977!)


11. George Littlechild, This Land Is My Land.

Selected paintings and collages by George Littlechild, with accompanying discussion of each. Sometimes the discussion is an autobiographical story, sometimes it's a history lesson, sometimes both. Oft-times Littlechild discusses the symbolism or composition that he uses, or explains his intent in creating a painting. Some of the paintings are emotionally intense ("Urban Indian Pain Dance" is about his and his brother's experience growing up as orphans in state care; "Red Horse in a Sea of White Horses" is about his experience being the only Indian child in an all-white school), others are lighthearted and fantastical ("Buffalo Dancing"), and still more are about pride of community and identity ("This Warrior Goes Dancing," "In Memory of the Sioux Warriors," "Horse Dance"), or his development as an artist ("Indian Artist Visits New York, New York").

This is definitely a book to take one's time with and to return to: there are all the delicious paintings to absorb and reconsider, after all. And I adore that the book encompasses a wide range of topics: a very nice antidote to stereotypical constructions of Indian identity.

(tags: Abenaki; Acoma; Cree, Canada)

Diana Abu-Jaber, Origin

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42. Diana Abu-Jaber, Origin

Abu-Jaber is totally my new favorite author. She has an amazing, vivid way of describing things, particularly places, which I adore. In this book, the setting is Syracuse, New York in the middle of winter, and everything about that is so exactly described: the particular blues and white of winter light, early twilights, lead-colored skies, too much wind, the look of snow falling in the early morning, black ice on the streets, the feelings of isolation, claustrophobia, and loneliness that winter often inspires, cold air in your lungs.

The plot is about Lena, who works as a fingerprint examiner in a police office. There's a case involving a dead baby that the medical examiner ruled to be SIDS, but which the mother swears was a murder, saying that she heard footsteps in her empty house just before finding that her baby had died. Meanwhile, Lena has been doing research into her own past: she was adopted at three, and has only strange, vague memories of the time before that- rain forests, monkeys, a plane crash- and no one seems to know if these memories are real, metaphorical, or just a three-year-old's daydreams.

Everything eventually turns out to be connected, of course, but the revelations still surprised me. This novel is completely different in voice from everything else Abu-Jaber has written; it's almost a thriller, with a tense, brooding tone that fits perfectly with the mysteries and the cold winter. Highly recommended.

#1-#3 - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Amitav Ghosh & Taichi Yamada

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Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

( The world was silent when they died )

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

( Things we lost in the flood )

Strangers by Taichi Yamada

( Tried to avoid spoilers through vagueness )