BOO!
My granddaughter Jessica Helms, is a graduate of Saint Cloud State University about which I'm immensely proud. Afterall, she helped me with my October 10th blogpost "A Meeting of Chance," https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2024/10/10-october-2024-meeting-of-chance.html
She created an Ojibwemowin word for Great Horned Owl and suggested several books for me to read, including "There There," by Tommy Orange, (Published June 5, 2018) about twelve stories of an urban Native American community in Oakland, California, portraying the complexity and ambiguity of Native American experiences in contemporary America, and "The Only Good Indians," by Stephen Graham Jones (Published June 14, 2020) a horror story about revenge, cultural identity, and deviating from tradition.
These stories about Native Americans of the 21st Century, by Native authors, are quite a change from the gamut of historical documentaries I have read concerning strictly the 19th and 20th century stories I've invested almost all my reading time; but, I can say now, my knowledge of some of the stories of the past sometimes lend themselves to these stories of the present should the characters refer to historical events -- and they often do.
The Roseau Library has been successful finding several titles for me within the Northwest Regional Library System, including my most recent request: SEEING RED: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen, a citizen of the Red Cliff Reservation in Wisconsin, that, I understand, both Roseau and Thief River Falls libraries have since purchased for their own shelves. So far it's a good read with much more to learn.
Judging from her obvious contributions to your October 10 post, I imagine Jessica as a Native American version of Zadie Smith.
ReplyDelete