Native American Authors 2022 Edition
We’ve been celebrating Native American Heritage month by spotlighting leaders and those who work tirelessly on our behalf. Today, while we are celebrating the long weekend of Heritage month, lets take a look at a few books to get you through the cold winter months to come. Sit by the fire and read with us.
Books by Native American Voices – 2022 edition
Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
Most histories of our country are told from the white colonizers’ perspectives, just like almost all historical accounts comes from the point of view of the winners. In this beautiful book, we learn about the lives, fates, hopes and dreams of the Native people instead.
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
These searing, devastating and often darkly funny stories introduce us to a community of Native people living on a Maine Penobscot reservation. There’s family tragedy, battling drug dependency and poverty, but we also meet plucky children, adults who survive against all odds and an abiding, affecting love.
Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
After Luz’s brother is run out of town by a violent white mob, she’s left to navigate 1930s Denver by herself. But before long, she begins to see visions of her ancestors and their lives in the nearby Lost Territory, bearing witness to their struggle, perseverance and how important it is to ensure those stories don’t die with her.
White Horse by Erika T Wurth
Get ready for a dark tale with this new novel about the importance of family, what it means to be haunted and how our past informs our future. Oh, and there’s lots of heavy metal, dive bars and scenes so gritty, you can feel them between your back teeth. Crack open a cold one, pull on a well-worn band T-shirt and get ready for some spine tingles.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (This seems to be the must read of the year)
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.