A bunch of loosely woven essays on memory of a gross injustice ultimately forming a loose semblance of a plot.



Q: “There There,” by Radiohead… “Just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.” … This there there. He hadn’t read Gertrude Stein beyond the quote. (с)



Rating: We start at 5 stars.

+1 star: for the fearlessness: raising this controversial topic is strong.

-1 star: for the disjointedness. As an innovative and fresh view it worked. As a novel, it didn't. The book is more like a collection

A bunch of loosely woven essays on memory of a gross injustice ultimately forming a loose semblance of a plot.



Q: “There There,” by Radiohead… “Just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.” … This there there. He hadn’t read Gertrude Stein beyond the quote. (с)



Rating: We start at 5 stars.

+1 star: for the fearlessness: raising this controversial topic is strong.

-1 star: for the disjointedness. As an innovative and fresh view it worked. As a novel, it didn't. The book is more like a collection of stories, instead of a novel.

-1 star: for some minor factual inaccuracies (Mel Gibson and heads… there are many sources, including The Golden Bough by James George Frazer, that refer to pre-Columbus bloody native traditions, not just Mel.).

+1 star: a lot of difficult topics, not least of which the FAS, bipolarity, obesity, digital addiction, rape, poverty, substances abuse, DUI, home violence… All shades of hell.

-1 star: all the above things are common for people of all backgrounds. So… what does it have to do specifically with the Nativeness of the Tribal people?

So, I don't think the topic was very well shown. The issues felt like a laundry list of issues that are popular in discussion today.

A bunch of guys decide half-brainedly to rob a powwow? And? How is that a cultural phenomenon?

Drug dealing? How is it cultural and specific for the Indians? It isn't.

+1 star: Some quotes were truly beautiful and evocative (see below).

-1 star: While I get that the author wanted to get as many bonus points as possible and therefore crammed every issue he could into the space of one book, it didn't give space for analysis. For the whys and hows and what-do-we-dos.

The 'analysis' that was present, wasn't analytical. It was more like modern mythology, which looks beautiful in quotes but gives precious little brainfood. So, no proper analysis incorporated, which is a giant minus for me.

Overall: 4 stars.



Q:

Some of us grew up with stories about massacres. Stories about what happened to our people not so long ago. (c)

Q:

In 1621, colonists invited Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, to a feast after a recent land deal. ...Two years later there was another, similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship. Two hundred Indians dropped dead that night from an unknown poison. (c)

Q:

Metacomet, also known as King Philip, was forced to sign a peace treaty to give up all Indian guns. Three of his men were hanged. His brother Wamsutta was, let’s say, very likely poisoned after being summoned and seized by the Plymouth court. All of which lead to the first official Indian war. (c)

Q:

Metacomet was beheaded and dismembered. Quartered. They tied his four body sections to nearby trees for the birds to pluck. Alderman was given Metacomet’s hand, which he kept in a jar of rum and for years took around with him—charged people to see it. Metacomet’s head was sold to Plymouth Colony for thirty shillings—the going rate for an Indian head at the time. The head was put on a spike, carried through the streets of Plymouth, then displayed at Plymouth Fort for the next twenty-five years. (c)

Q:

In 1637, anywhere from four to seven hundred Pequot gathered for their annual Green Corn Dance. Colonists surrounded their village, set it on fire, and shot any Pequot who tried to escape. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a feast in celebration, and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. Thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were what we have to call “successful massacres.” At one such celebration in Manhattan, people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls. (c)

Q:

But the city made us new, and we made it ours. … We did not move to cities to die. (c)

Q:

The quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced. (c)

Q:

We are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood through a blanket from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us. (c)

Q:

Cities form in the same way as galaxies. (c)

Q:

Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere. (c)

Q:

Maxine told me I’m a medicine person. She said people like me are rare, and that when we come along, people better know we look different because we are different. To respect that. (c)

Q:

They look at me like I already did some shit, so I might as well do the shit they’re looking at me like that for. (c)

Q:

Let the content direct the vision. (c)

Q:

“Why should we speak our business around people we don’t even know?” she’d say. (c)

Q:

“What does it look like?” he said.

“Like you’re trying to get rid of the island one rock at a time,” I said.

“I wish I could throw this stupid island into the ocean.”

“It’s already in the ocean." (c)

Q:

She told me the world was made of stories, nothing else, just stories, and stories about stories. (c)

Q:

Slowly receding into the past like all those sacred and beautiful and forever-lost things. (c)

Q:

The trouble with believing is you have to believe that believing will work, you have to believe in belief. (c)

Q:

My problem hasn’t just been with gaming. Or gambling. Or incessantly scrolling down and refreshing my social media pages. Or the endless search to find good new music. It’s all of it. I was really into Second Life for a while. I think I logged two whole years there. (c)

Q:

Sometimes the internet can think with you, or even for you, lead you in mysterious ways to information you need and would never have thought to think of or research on your own. (c)

Q:

If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps. (c)

Q:

And somewhere in there, inside him, where he is, where he’ll always be, even now it is morning, and the birds, the birds are singing. (c)