Born to a Secwepemc father and Jewish-Irish mother, Julian Brave NoiseCat's childhood was full of contradictions. Despite living in the urban Native community of Oakland, California, he was raised primarily by his white mother. He was a competitive powwow dancer, but asked his father to cut his hair short, fearing that his white classmates would call him a girl if he kept it long. When his father, tormented by an abusive and impoverished rez upbringing, eventually left the family, NoiseCat was left to make sense of his Indigenous heritage and identity on his own. Now, decades later, Noisecat has set across the country to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding this nation's First Peoples.
An extraordinary read ... Far-reaching, ever-surprising, funny, tragic, and written in what is almost certainly an unprecedented format ... Moving and a little bit heartbreaking ... Meticulously researched ... In this striking way, NoiseCat proves to be a formidable seanchaí: lively, meandering on occasion perhaps, but always engaging ... At times, you nearly feel you’re sitting at a fireside beside him ... The storyteller does an excellent job of delivering the 'reckoning' of the book’s sub-title ... Powerful.
Both a personal story and an extensive history of [Noisecat's] people ... A framework that lends the book a unique cadence and rhythm ... This book is assuredly about more than just making it to the morning ... Rich and complex and profound ... Heroic and necessary, We Survived the Night is proof of that sustained resurrection.
