If you’ve been wanting to decolonize your bookshelf but aren’t sure how to start, Adult Book Bingo has an indigenous author square, which is an excellent opportunity to begin including more works by Native authors in your daily reading.
The Library offers plenty of fiction and nonfiction by indigenous writers from all over the world, but to get you started, here are three books from different genres by Native authors from North and Central America.
There There by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne, Arapaho)
If you missed this one when it was a Peak Pick at our library locations or if you were planning to participate in Seattle Reads 2020 before it was cancelled, you should definitely make reading There There a priority for Book Bingo. The novel tells the story of twelve characters who all come from different Native communities, who are all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow for very different, personal reasons. Along the way, they realize they have more in common than they previously expected, as Orange delivers a poignant commentary on the layered complexity of contemporary urban Native identity.
The Sea is My Country by Joshua L. Reid (Snohomish)
Described as “the first full-scale history of the Makah people of the Pacific Northwest,” this book, from University of Washington Professor Dr. Joshua L. Reid, is a must-read for anyone interested in decolonizing their local history knowledge by learning more about Native history in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, Dr. Reid writes about the Makah’s ongoing relationship to the sea as far more powerful and important to their identity and the local economy than their relationship to the land. It calls into question the colonial European ways of thinking about PNW geography and commerce that have been imposed on this region since colonization.
My Woman Card Is Anti-native & Other Two-spirit Truths: A Book of Haikus, Sonnets, and Free Verse Poems by Xemiyulu Manibusan Tapepechul (Nawat)
This is a beautiful collection of poetry in a variety of forms from Xemiyulu Manibusan Tapepechul, a Two-Spirit, trans womxn Siwayul artist and activist from Kuskatan (El Salvador). The collection is an opportunity to engage with a drastically underrepresented perspective on Native identity, namely that of Two-Spirit, queer, trans, and otherwise marginalized Native voices. The author’s poetry explores what concepts of queerness, gender, and femininity mean in relationship to their indigeneity and surviving under colonialism. In sharing these experiences, this read offers a great opportunity for readers to engage with those ideas and conceptualize what love, identity, medicine, and gender expression might look like outside the Eurocentric categorical boundaries imposed by colonialism.
For more ideas for books to meet your Summer Book Bingo challenge, follow our Shelf Talk #BookBingoNW2020 series or check the hashtag #BookBingoNW2020 on social media. Book bingo is presented in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures .
~posted by Hannah P.
Leave a Comment