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.
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.
Ambitious ... Inventive ... Generates moving parallels between myth and reality ... However, the account loses some steam as NoiseCat switches in and out of straightforward reportage ... Still, NoiseCat’s attempt to cover as much territory as possible so that “these places, stories, and ancestors come full circle to carry us back to where we belong” results in a powerful archive of Indigenous pain and persistence.
