#Indigenous lit

[andrumedus]

...my heart had become a phoenix of swallowed myths. [...]

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Hieroglyphic”

[read-alert]

Happy Indigenous Heritage Month!

All the Dead Things by Bear Lee

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur

The Flicker by HE Edgmon

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot

Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction ed by Grace L Dillon

The Knowing: The Enduring Legacy of Residential Schools by Tanya Talaga

Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[postmodernismruinedme]

"I no longer wish to be called resilient. Call me reckless, impatient, and emotional. Even Indigenous. Call me anything other than survivor. I am so many more things than brave."

- Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk

[wolfythoughts]

Book Review: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

A previously incarcerated Indigenous woman loves her job at an independent bookstore focused on Indigenous literature right up until the store’s most annoying customer dies and begins haunting it. Summary:A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the…

[reedandstorm]

Oh, How We Laughed* is now available for pre-order!

This anthology showcases short stories, poetry and artwork made by queer and disabled creatives, and strongly features indigenous, neurodivergent and transgender voices. It was edited by Reed and Storm Editing and also features work by head editor Cameron Rutherford.

Funds raised by sales will go to the Collaborative Radical Intersectional Performance Space, Drop In Care Space and Pay The Rent who all support local communities, and to the 15 featured creators.

This anthology is an exhibition of the strong emotions that connect humanity and make us all unique. Our fear, joy, loss, exhilarating highs, depressive lows, and so much more. How we express those emotions might be different, yet we all strive for a laugh.

(*Cried, chuckled, suffered, retreated, enjoyed, blanked, masked, cringed, smiled, consumed, planned, protested, disappeared, felt, ruminated, withdrew, celebrated, raged, meditated, screamed, froze, danced, existed…)

[thegentleintellectual]

“and that’s when I wondered if maybe falling in love looked like a crisis to an observer.”

Excerpt From: Terese Marie Mailhot. “Heart Berries.”

[whilereadingandwalking]

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction anthology was a good Halloween read. It had many genuine scares. I did find myself wishing that editors Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. had been stricter with how many stories got into the anthology; the quality went very up and down throughout.

But the highlights made it well worth reading. In Mathilda Zeller's "Kashtuka," the main character is warned of violent doubles who can impersonate you; in Cherie Dimaline's "Tick Talk," a terrifying tick grows on a body in a play on resentment and grief. Characters wrestle with traumatic histories and real-life monstrousness (from residential schools to sexual assault to missing women) and with the horrors of indigenous folklore and belief, from the Weshtigo to ancient curses to uncanny doubles to creatures whose eyes flash red. They deal with Get Out–like monsters as well, whether in Rebecca Roanhorse's story about a woman willing to do near-anything to be accepted into a rich, white family, to people who collect indigenous bodies like trophies in stories by Conley Lyons and Amber Blaeser-Wardzala.

Content warnings for forced abortion, neglect/abuse, sexual assault/rape, violence/gore.

[sleepysera]

"And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"

-H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1897)

[byronicist]

"I came into this world already scarred by loss on both sides of my family. My Indigenous side; my European side. My father and my mother were the kind of damaged people who should never have had children. But of course, they had me, and so my first language was loss."

Deborah Miranda, When Coyote Knocks on the Door (2021)

[andrumedus]

Come, sweet, I am a house with many rooms. There is no end. Each room is a street to the next world. Where live other cities beneath incendiary skies. And you have made a fire in every room. Come. Lie with me before the flame.

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “City of Fire”

[read-alert]

Happy Indigenous Heritage Month!

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology ed by Shane Hawk and Theodore C Van Alst Jr

Kapaemahu by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, and Daniel Sousa

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliot

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline

Feed by Tommy Pico

The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor

Native Americans in Comic Books: A Critical Study by Michael A Sheyahshe

This Place: 150 Years Retold ed by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"Hybrid Vigor" is available to read here

[kenyan-corvid]

Human headshot designs for the main three in The Great Gatsby!

I just finished it and I will never get over this work i fear so here are some headcanons and such as well ^_^ TW: Residential schools, implications of abuse In my mind, Jay is a Two-Spirit Dakota, and his birth name was Winyan Ska (White Jay), but he was taken with other children in his tribe to a residential school. (He is canonically from rural and poor North Dakota) While he was there, a white millionaire took great interest in him and his vitiligo, seeing an opportunity to prove to both the American people and the government that their goal of "Save the man, kill the Indian" was working. As a result, Jay was held to much higher expectations and was forced to spend much of his time living with and working for the man while studying white culture and economics, dedicating his life to wealth accumulation. Despite this, he still tries to keep and remember parts of his culture!

Other headcanons: Gatsby:

Gatsby is intersex, this is something he avoids sharing due to the possible cosnequences

He's also pansexual and polyamorous!

He was forced to change his name simply to Jay to better conform. This mirrors his in-text name change to fit in with high society

Gatsby has a rough relationship with his surviving family and struggles to connect due to how much of his culture he has lost and how well he has integrated with White society. Despite this, he still tries to visit his reservation in secret and provide them with monetary aid.

Due to being intersex, he only has sex with those who he trusts greatly. He is not that sexually experienced in terms of doing it with others besides Daisy and Nick.

Very clingy to those he loves due to abandonment issues spurred on by being taken to a Residential School

Has lifelong trouble digesting most foods due to his Dakota background

He has chronic back pain due to the abuse and beatings he suffered at the school

Great with kids and often watches Pammy Nick

100% Irish

He's autistic, extremely perceptive, and passive, meaning he's content to observe most interactions. He's more talkative with those he's familiar with

He is gay and on the aromantic spectrum! Nick will often have flings with men in both East and West Egg, but he's not interested in long-term relationships

Nick loves nature and is a published xenofiction author under a pen name, as writing often helps him cope with his trauma. Living in the city very much drains him.

He has several cats and often feeds and sketches the stray animals near his home

Resting tired/sad face Daisy

Mixed! Both Irish, Black and Latina

Loves jazz and is skilled at playing the clarinet! She's in a few jazz bands and performs around New York City in speakeasies and the like. She hopes to be able to record her own record someday

She has trouble trusting others due to how often she's been let down by those who she thought she could depend on

She's bisexual with a preference towards women!

Her and Gatsby have no interest in having a romantic relationship but have an extremely close bond as friends due to shared experiences and traumas. To let off steam though they do have occasional sex

She often helps Gatsby distribute his liquor as well as strategize when it comes to illegal activities

Had post-mortem psychosis after the birth of Pammy

[magicsilas]

I am on Volume 16 of Banana Fish. I hope to finish reading the series come this Sunday. After that, I plan on reading, Compound Fracture, and Celestial Monsters. After that, I really want to read something with indigenous heritage.

[outstanding-quotes]

I am doing my best to not become a museum

of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.

I am begging: let me be lonely but not invisible.

Natalie Diaz, “American Arithmetic”