#Native American author

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Remember by Joy Harjo, illustrated by Michaela Goade

[tinynavajoreads]

Just Finished: Shutter by Ramona Emerson

A story by a Diné woman about a Diné woman who is a forensic photographer. She can also see and hear ghosts, something she's been able to do all her life and she has had to hide that she can, with death such a taboo subject for Diné.

I am Diné myself, Navajo, and I was excited to see a book written about and by Diné woman! It's more of a mystery and less of a fantasy and so it took me a bit to get into it, but once I did I devoured it! This is a really good book and I really really hope Ramona Emerson writes more!

What about a book draws you in, if it's not your type of book you read?

[haveacupofjohanny]

Friday Feature: Celebrating Angeline Boulley - A Voice for Native American Stories

New on the blog for #fridayfeature: Discover Angeline Boulley, the celebrated author of "Firekeeper's Daughter." Learn about her heritage, advocacy, and the impact of her debut novel on Native American representation in YA literature. Visit Have a Cup of

This week’s #Fridayfeature shines a spotlight on Angeline Boulley, a celebrated author best known for her debut young adult novel, “Firekeeper’s Daughter.” This was my introduction to the author, and it’s one I will never forget. While her work has garnered significant attention, several lesser-known aspects of her life and career deserve recognition. Background and Heritage Sault Ste. Marie…

[anotherpapercut]

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

[desdasiwrites]

– Tiffany McDaniel, On the Savage Side

[rs-hawk]

I don’t like to be political on this page since I’m trying to stay professional, but my existence is political so here we go.

If you support Trump, unfollow me. I’m over it and don’t give a fuck. You don’t deserve to consume my content while not seeing me as a human being.

I am a queer Indigenous person. He wants me and my family forced onto the Reservation of our Nation for the CRIME of being registered. For the CRIME of acknowledging our ancestors and our families. He doesn’t want me or my family to be able to go to school or work off of that Reservation. Rights Indigenous Peoples have gotten in the last few DECADES (dancing our traditional dances, our religious practices, speaking our own fucking languages), he wants to take away. Trump fucking posted the National Guard outside of Reservations during COVID to prevent my people from getting medical care. Instead of medicine or help, he sent BODY BAGS. He was President and he let his own people die because of where they lived.

Don’t get me started on all the other ways he wants me dead. I have medical issues where it would be easy for me to die during pregnancy. I shouldn’t be allowed to love another adult because of our sex. I shouldn’t be allowed to work , have children or own anything because technically I’m disabled.

He is a convicted felon. If he can’t vote, he shouldn’t be President. If you are even considering voting for him, unfollow me, because you don’t see me as a person. I would rather never make another cent off my writing than have people that think my death and my rights being stripped away is a fair trade for another old White Supremacist to be in office pay me.

[uwmspeccoll]

An Indigenous Thanksgiving

Here's a short list of titles for your holiday reading by three noted Indigenous writers: Kevin Loring (Nlaka'pamux; b. 1974); Tiffany Midge (Hunkpapa Lakota; b. 1965); Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota).

In Loring's play Thanks for Giving (Talonbooks, 2018), a mixed-family Thanksgiving dinner comes face to face with some unsolicited truths and sibling rivalry, where the old ways surrender to new possibilities, but the family's enduring spirit continues forward, ever fierce.

FastHorse's publication presents two of her plays The Thanksgiving Play (2017) and What Would Crazy Horse Do? (2014), published together by Theatre Communications Group in 2021. In The Thanksgiving Play, a group of well-intentioned white teaching artists scramble to create an ambitious "woke" Thanksgiving pageant that also celebrates Native American Heritage Month. Amidst their eagerness to put on the most culturally sensitive show possible, things quickly begin to devolve into the absurd. In What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Calvin and Journey--twins who are the last two members of Marahotah clan -- flounder after their grandfather's passing, and form a suicide pact in case their lives on the reservation become too hopeless.

Midge's Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) is a compelling collection of the author's satirical musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. We leave you with a snippet from Midge's Thanksgiving offering, "Hey America, I'm Taking Back Thanksgiving":

Hey America, Well, it's been fun. We've had a good run. But we're done now. No hard feelings -- it's just not working out. It's not you; it's me, okay? Well, actually it is you, but whatevs. . . . Anyway, I'm breaking up with you. . . . You broke me, America. You broke us. . . . I think you know why. . . . I'm taking back Thanksgiving. It was mine to begin with; you were just appropriating it to satisfy your need for some happy-go-lucky fairy tale in the midst of crimes against humanity. . . . No turkey for you. I'm taking it back. . . . No more cranberries, no more stuffing. And that roasted brussels sprouts dish your grandma makes, . . . I'm taking that too. . . . Don't Tweet me, don't message me. We're done. I hope you figure yourself out and someday get your life and your country together. Good luck. . . . P.S. I flirted with Canada behind your back, but they're not working out either, so don't even think of looking for me there. I've moved on.

While Midge has moved on, we haven't quite yet, and we wish you a pleasant Thanksgiving Day.

View posts from Thanksgivings past.

View other posts from our Native American Literature Collection.

[duckprintspress]

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with 7 Queer Books We Love

November is National Native American Heritage Month! We’re celebrating with books (as always, lol). We asked our rec list contibutors for their favorite queer books either by Native American authors or starring Native American characters. Most of these books (maybe all, I couldn’t confirm for all the authors) are both! Contributors to the list are Nina Waters, hullosweetpea, D.V. Morse, Shea Sullivan and an anonymous contributor.

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Indiginerds edited by Alina Pete

First Nations culture is living, vibrant, and evolving…

…and generations of Indigenous kids have grown up with pop culture creeping inexorably into our lives. From gaming to social media, pirate radio to garage bands, Star Trek to D&D, and missed connections at the pow wow, Indigenous culture is so much more than how it’s usually portrayed. These comics are here to celebrate those stories!

Featuring an all-Indigenous creative team, INDIGINERDS is an exhilarating anthology collecting 11 stories about Indigenous people balancing traditional ways of knowing with modern pop culture.

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Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz

Postcolonial Love Poem is a thunderous river of a book, an anthem of desire against erasure. It demands that every body carried in its pages – bodies of language, land, suffering brothers, enemies and lovers – be touched and held. Here, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic, and portrayed with a glowing intimacy: the alphabet of a hand in the dark, the hips’ silvered percussion, a thigh’s red-gold geometry, the emerald tigers that leap in a throat. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dune fields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Natalie Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves. Her poetry questions what kind of future we might create, built from the choices we make now – how we might learn our own cures and ‘go where there is love’.

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A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.

Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He’s found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.

Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries.

And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.

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

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear–and even follow you home.These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

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The Witch King (Witch King series) by H.E. Edgmon

Wyatt would give anything to forget where he came from–but a kingdom demands its king.

In Asalin, fae rule and witches like Wyatt Croft…don’t. Wyatt’s betrothal to his best friend, fae prince Emyr North, was supposed to change that. But when Wyatt lost control of his magic one devastating night, he fled to the human world.

Now a coldly distant Emyr has hunted him down. Despite transgender Wyatt’s newfound identity and troubling past, Emyr has no intention of dissolving their engagement. In fact, he claims they must marry now or risk losing the throne. Jaded, Wyatt strikes a deal with the enemy, hoping to escape Asalin forever. But as he gets to know Emyr, Wyatt realizes the boy he once loved may still exist. And as the witches face worsening conditions, he must decide once and for all what’s more important–his people or his freedom.

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Elatsoe (Elatsoe series) by Darcie Little Badger

Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream.

There are some differences. This America been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.

Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.

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Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky series) by Rebecca Roanhorse

A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

What are your favorite queer books with Native American representation?

Want to chat your favorite reads with us? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!

Update your Goodreads TBR with any of these books by visiting our queer Native American books shelf  on Goodreads!Shop books with Native American rep using our rec list on our Bookshop.org affiliate page!

[thegentleintellectual]

Text ID: “Falling in love felt fluid. It snowed when we fell in love. Everything reminded me of warm milk. Everything seemed less real. I thought my cup was overflowing. I found myself caressing my own face”

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

[bluehardtops]

forgive me but this picture looks like its from twilight

[godzilla-reads]

💜 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

“We live in a time when every choice matters.”

As Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests Serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most?

Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of my favorite authors, her books asking the big questions and bringing up topics that seem so large, yet we can tackle one small deed at a time. In this book she considers economy and what gift economy looks like in the modern world. How can we have healthy and happy lives under the rule of capitalism- which brings us neither health nor happiness (in most cases)?

Her writing is very inspiring with little anecdotes and pieces of knowledge to think on, weigh in our minds, and even some examples of how we can participate in a gift economy on our own level. Short as it is, an extended essay, I’d say this is a lovely book to read. Food for thought, as it might be.

[musingsofmonica]

68 New Books to Read for Native American Heritage Month

“November is Native American Heritage Month in the U.S. In honor of the ongoing celebrations, we’ve collected below several dozen new and recent books by Native American and Canadian First Nations authors. The titles listed have all been published within the past five years and cut across multiple genres, both fiction and nonfiction.”

[specialagentartemis]

tbh what I ACTUALLY think about content warnings is that the author should not be the one writing them. I have encountered multiple stories where the events the author warned for were kind of bland and predictable, but there was stuff baked into the narrative that was really uncomfortable or disturbing and the author seems to have not considered that a problem at all. Becky Chambers’s fish scene STILL haunts me.

[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)

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down." Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

[an-aura-about-you]

it's frustrating reading a book, good or bad, and then it drops some casually offensive shit in your lap.