#indian-authors

[thepersonalwords]

some words bring warmthjust bybeing next to each other.

Sanober Khan

[phaedraismyusername]

This year some of my favourite books I read were written by indigenous American authors and I just wanted to shout out a couple that I fell in love with

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Horror being my second most read genre, I did not think books could still get under my skin the way this one did lol. It follows four Blackfoot men who are seemingly being hunted by a vengeful... something... years after a fateful hunting trip that happened just before they went their separate ways. The horror, the dread, the something... pure nightmare fuel 10/10

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

An apocalyptic novel following an isolated Anishinaabe community in the far north who lose contact with the outside world. When two of their young men return from their college with dire news, they set about planning on how to survive the winter, but when outsiders follow, lines are drawn in the community that might doom them all. This book is all dread all the time, the use of dreams and the inevitability of conflict weighs heavy til the very end. An excellent apocalypse story if you're into that kind of thing.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

This book follows Jade, a deeply troubled mixed race teenager with a shitty homelife who's *obsessed* with slasher movies. When she finds evidence that there's a killer running about her soon-to-be gentrified small town, she weaponises that knowledge to predict what's going to happen next. I don't think this book will work for most people, it's a little stream of consciousness, Jade's head is frequently a very difficult place to be in, but by the last page I had so much love for her as a character and the emotional rollercoaster she's on that I had to mention it here.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Taking a bit of a left turn but this charming YA murder mystery really stuck with me this year. Elatsoe is a teenage girl living in an America where myths, monsters, and magic are all real every day occurrences. When her cousin dies mysteriously with no witnesses, she decides to do whatever she can, including using her ability to raise the spirits of dead animals, to solve the case. The worldbuilding was just really fun in this one, but the Native American myths and influence were the shining star for me, and the asexual rep was refreshing to see in a YA book too tbh

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

The audiobook, the audiobook, the audiobook!!!! Also the physical book because formatting and illustrations, but the audiobook!!! Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer, and this novel is a genre blending of 20 years worth of the authors journal entries, poetry, and short stories, that culminates in a truly unique story about a young girl surviving her teenage years in a small tundra town in the 70s. It is sad and beautiful and hard but an experience like nothing else I read this year.

[lexion219997]

Titans by @alllvinho on twitter/x

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.

[sodacatz]

I'm so down bad for this man it's not even funny

[sajra-savera]

Him : What's your biggest dream?

Me : To be a writer. I lied...partially.

I almost said that, "Yes I dream to be a writer but before this one, I'd like to be yours first. And god, I want people to read my works so bad, but would it be possible to somehow learn how to read hands first? Cause god knows how I wish if I could just read the palms of my hands and know whether you were in my destiny or not. I know you'd ask me then will I give up if I do not see you there? Well, definitely not. Hell, I want to write till my hands are fully covered in ink and am not able to write anymore but first things first, I want my fingertips to be kissed by you, every time I write you a poetry. Surely, I want to be so famous that every single person on this earth knows me but most of all, I'd like you to know me...see me. In every way possible. Yes, my dream is to be a writer. But my biggest dream? That's you."

But instead I just smiled. If only he knew...

[maihonhassan]

When Farhat Ehsas wrote:

Meri dil ki tabahi ki shikayat par kaha us ne , tum apne ghar ki chizon ki hifazat kyun nahin karte

And Jaun Eliya Replied:

Kaun is ghar ki dekh bhaal kare, roz ek cheez toot jaati hai

[hussyknee]

Seeing characters in romance stories just jetting between countries at a moment's notice with no thought for visa; seeing airports as sites of triumphant climaxes and romantic denouements instead of places of fear and danger where a sword hangs above your head— it all breaks off little pieces of my heart. They're constant reminders that my people will never be human enough in the colonial world order to be allowed to move freely around it. No matter what your race, those non-refugees living in the Global North will never understand what it's like to be part of a global ghetto where your passport is nothing but a trembling supplication and humiliation.

[oatmealcrisp-freak]

Danny Fenton Phantom is trans and mixed race I'm just saying

[finalgirrls]

A playlist for one of the best literary horror girlies: Jade Daniels from the Jade Daniels trilogy (My Heart is a Chainsaw, Don’t Fear the Reaper, and The Angel of Indian Lake) written by Stephen Graham Jones.

I had to make this as I read an advance copy of The Angel of Indian Lake (out later this year!!) with a moodboard because I’m well into my feelings about the series and Jade.

[thepersonalwords]

a single poemthe thing that can keep melight on my feet,when my soul isheavy with sorrow.

Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

[aahanna]

"My reads for this month are going to be these "

Indian author edition

[anirregularperson]

[thestoryteller8]

[clonerightsagenda]

Kind of feel like Novik gave El a Chinese friend and made her half-Indian to try to offset the optics of the Sinister Chinese Bloc but I'm not sure it's working

[mysticaltastemakerwitch]

Viggo Mortensen, my love 🌹