Book of the Year 2022:
a reading list
A countywide literary event in partnership with Cuesta College and Cal Poly Student Diversity & Belonging, the Book of the Year program encourages community members to read together and engage in discussion and programming. 
 
This year's selection is There There, by award-winning author Tommy Orange.
 
 
There there
by Tommy Orange

A novel—which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans; with an inheritance of profound spirituality; and with a plague of addiction, abuse and suicide—follows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. A first novel.
 
*****See Tommy Orange live at Cuesta College on Thursday, April 21, at 5 pm! Get tickets here.
The firekeeper's daughter
by Angeline Boulley

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths
Tending the wild : Native American knowledge and the management of California's natural resources
by Kat Anderson

Demonstrates how Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources can contribute to contemporary conservation efforts, exploring the land management practices that Native Americans recall from their grandparents, such as how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. Original.
Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry
by Joy Harjo

"A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathersthe work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. With work from Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, among others, Living Nations, Living Words showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "poetry [that] emerges from the soul of a community, the heart and lands of the people. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than 500 living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.""
House made of dawn
by N. Scott Momaday

A young Native American returning from World War II searches for his place on his old reservation and in urban society
The marrow thieves
by Cherie Dimaline

In a world where most people have lost the ability to dream, a fifteen-year-old Indigenous boy who is still able to dream struggles for survival against an army of "recruiters" who seek to steal his marrow and return dreams to the rest of the world
When two feathers fell from the sky
by Margaret Verble

After disaster strikes during one of her shows, Two Feathers, a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan to Glendale Park Zoo from a Wild West show, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries with the help of an eclectic cast of characters. 35,000 first printing.
An indigenous peoples' history of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the indigenous peoples was genocidal and imperialist, designed to crush the original inhabitants. Spanning more than 300 years, a classic bottom-up history significantly reframes how we view our past. Told from the viewpoint of the indigenous, it reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the U.S. empire.
The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author presents this unusual novel in which a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. 150,000 first printing.
My heart is a chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones

Protected by horror movies—especially the ones where the masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them—Jade Daniels, an angry, half-Indian outcast, pulls us into her dark mind when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian lake. 100,000 first printing.
Trickster : Native American Tales, a Graphic Collection
by Matt Dembicki

Collects twenty-three short stories in graphic novel format of tricksters from a variety of Native American traditions
The seed keeper : a novel
by Diane Wilson

"A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most"
Black sun
by Rebecca Roanhorse

A trilogy debut by the Nebula Award-winning author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn is inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and follows the unbalancing of the holy city of Tova amid a fateful solstice eclipse. 75,000 first printing. Maps.
Redbone : the true story of a Native American rock band
by Christian Staebler

Presents the history of the Native American rock band Redbone, who rose to fame while maintaining their cultural identity, and took a stand as the American Indian Movement in the 1970s gained momentum