RaveThe Star Tribune... a collection of short essays as multilayered and majestic as the landscape that has been present in everything that Momaday has written ... this poetic love letter to the Earth blurs and crosses lines between genres, times and places, allowing us to see the bridging of our own physical existence with the realm beyond the tangible. Tribal stories, human experience and the spiritual world cannot be separated from the Earth, that entity that must be acknowledged and cared for as she has cared for us ... There is some deeply sad writing about damage we have done to the Earth, and our carelessness, but we have the ability to consider and to be better, to \'not be ashamed before the Earth\' ... a size that makes it portable — a movable feast — and can be easily carried and kept near the reader who, like me, after reading from beginning to end will pick it up to open and revisit at random ... Each time we will cherish the stories, images and wisdom that Momaday has cared for and now passes to us, in true Native elder fashion.
Kelli Jo Ford
RaveThe Star Tribune... stunning and lovable ... Ford has drawn characters who are earthy, honest and believable in how they resolve or reconcile to difficulties ... There are so many passages in this book that are moving ... The last chapter of Crooked Hallelujah. is apocalyptic and takes a courageous step into speculative fiction. This works very well, seamlessly really, with the foundation of the intergenerational story holding the world down, \'in the way that Cherokee women do.\'
Shonda Buchanan
RaveThe Minneapolis Star Tribune... an intergenerational memoir of Shonda Buchanan’s large extended family of many diversities, loaded with the slippery complexities of myriad ethnic experiences. A woman-centered handing down of experiences and knowledge from mother to daughter, from aunt to niece, the story is as heartbreaking and sorrowful as it is joyful and empowering ... a story remembered and shared, shedding light on the continuity of a family through times of historical trauma and the bludgeoning of identities and human dignity ... With a writing style that moves with ease in and out of the poetic, the no-nonsense, the tragic and a kind of endurance that is earthily and spiritually human, Black Indian is a read both intriguing and satisfying.
Anika Fajardo
PositiveThe Star TribuneThis is a full, satisfying read ... The narrative, strong enough to support the myriad stories that branch off on every page, is deceptively simple in the first pages ... Fajardo’s lovely, detailed description of the time she saw a fairy could be a metaphor for this memoir, which unfolds chronologically, big and small stories and details expanding and coloring the story.
