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Native American Heritage Month Diverse Reads: November 2020
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Birdsong
by Julie Flett
What it's about: When a young girl moves from the country to a small town, she feels lonely and out of place. But soon she meets an elderly woman next door, who shares her love of arts and crafts.
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First Laugh: Welcome, Baby!
by Rose Tahe and Nancy Bo Flood; illustrated by Jonathan Nelson
What it's about: The First Laugh Ceremony is a celebration held to welcome a new member of the community. As everyone tries to elicit the joyous sound from Baby, readers are introduced to details about Navajo life.
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Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story
by Kevin Noble Maillard; illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
What it's about: Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpré Award winner and Caldecott Honoree Juana Martinez-Neal.
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We Are Water Protectors
by Carole Lindstrom; illustrated by Michaela Goade
What it's about: When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth, one young water protector takes a stand to defend the planet's water.
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I Can Make This Promise
by Christine Day
What it's about: Inspired by her family's history, Christine Day tells the story of a girl who uncovers her family's secrets—and finds her own Native American identity.
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Indian No More
by Charlene Willing McManis and Traci Sorell
What it's about: When the federal government signs a bill into law that says Regina's tribe no longer exists, Regina becomes "Indian no more" overnight. Regina's father signs the family up for the Indian Relocation program and moves them to Los Angeles, where Regina finds a whole new world in her neighborhood on 58th Place.
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Elatsoe
by Darcie Little Badger
What it's about: The picture-perfect town of Willowbee hides dark secrets. Elatsoe, a Lipan Apache who can raise the ghosts of dead animals, will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to protect her family.
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Hearts Unbroken
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
What it's about: This realistic YA novel is the thoughtful story of a Native teen navigating the complicated, confusing waters of high school—and first love.
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The Marrow Thieves
by Cherie Dimaline
What it's about: The Indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive—but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
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Apple (Skin to the Core)
by Eric Gansworth
What it's about: In this memoir in verse, Eric Gansworth recounts his experiences, family history, and Onondaga identity.
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Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
by Steve Sheinkin
What it's about: A great American sport and Native American history come together in this true underdog story. Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians football team refused to accept defeat, despite facing overwhelming obstacles both on and off the field.
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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
What it's about: With deep compassion and graceful prose, botanist and professor of plant ecology Kimmerer encourages readers to consider the ways that our lives and language weave through the natural world. A mesmerizing storyteller, she shares legends from her Potawatomi ancestors to illustrate the culture of gratitude in which we all should live.
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When the light of the world was subdued, our songs came through : a Norton anthology of Native nations poetry
by Joy Harjo
"United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology. This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete"
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The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems
by N. Scott Momaday
What it's about: Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, House Made of Dawn (1968), ushered Native American literature into the American literary consciousness, and Momaday has remained a crucial voice and presence since. An admirable capstone to a distinguished literary career, this splendid selection should be a treasure for Momaday's readers and an excellent introduction for those new to Native American writing.
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An American Sunrise: Poems
by Joy Harjo
What it's about: Harjo, the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate, synthesizes history, memory and contemporary issues in her collection of poetry that laments the treatment of Native peoples and sings tribute to her Muscogee Creek heritage and ancestors. The legacy of the Trail of Tears and its echoes in today’s political landscape weave together with her personal experiences, benedictions and exhortations for us to care for the earth—and to listen.
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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
What it's about: Acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, challenging the founding myth of the United States and what she perceives as the glaring gaps in U.S. history regarding the continent’s native peoples.
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The Only Good Indians
by Stephen Graham Jones
What it's about: Jones (Mapping the Interior) spins a sharp, remarkable horror story out of a crisis of cultural identity. Four American Indian men, who shared a disturbing event during their youth, are hunted down years later by an entity bent on revenge that forces them to revisit the culture and traditions they left behind.
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House Made of Dawn
by N. Scott Momaday
What it's about: The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning classic from N. Scott Momaday. A young Native American returning from World War II finds himself caught between two worlds. Beautifully rendered and deeply affecting, House Made of Dawn has moved and inspired readers and writers for the last fifty years. It remains a masterpiece of the universal human condition and of Native American literature.
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Winter Counts
by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
What it's about: A vigilante enforcer on South Dakota's Rosebud Indian Reservation enlists the help of an ex to investigate the activities of an expanding drug cartel, while a new tribal council initiative raises controversial questions.
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Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
What it's about: More than forty years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him.
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Barking Water
What it's about: A dying Native American man enlists the help of an ex-lover to assist him in getting home to reconnect with his family.
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Winter in the Blood
What it's about: In Montana in the 1960s, a man searches for his wife who left him and stole his heirloom rifle.
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Dance Me Outside
What it's about: When one of the residents of the Kidabanessee Reservation in northern Ontario is brutally murdered, four teenagers find their friendships put to the ultimate test.
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Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
What it's about: A fictionalized account of the forced annexation and assimilation of Native Americans in the nineteenth century West.
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Up Heartbreak Hill
What it's about: Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three Native American teenagers as they navigate their senior year at a reservation high school. As graduation nears, they must decide whether or not to stay in their community—a place inextricably woven into the fiber of their beings—or leave in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere.
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We Shall Remain
What it's about: This television series highlights Native ingenuity and resilience over the course of 300 years and establishes Native history as an essential part of American history.
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The Warrior Tradition
What it's about: Tells the astonishing, heartbreaking, inspiring, and largely untold story of Native Americans in the United States military.
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Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian
What it's about: Traces the evolution of cinema's depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today, with clips from hundreds of classic and recent Hollywood movies, and candid interviews with celebrated Native and non-Native film celebrities, activists, critics, and historians.
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Last Stand at Little Big Horn
What it's about: Takes a fresh look at Custer's Last Stand, one of the best known but least understood moments in American history.
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Fresno County Public Library 2420 Mariposa St. Fresno, California 93721 559-600-READ (7323)www.fresnolibrary.org |
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