Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's

September 1, 2019
Standing Rock Sioux writer Midge (The Woman Who Married a Bear: Poems, 2016, etc.) delivers powerful, often funny observations on life as a Native American woman in a contentious time. As poet and novelist Geary Hobson observes in his foreword, Native people are too often thought of, at least by non-Natives, as humorless: "stolid, dour, ready to pounce on you (if you are white) and take away that unnecessary scalp." Not so Midge, who loves a pun, a play on words, and a goofy recasting of pop-culture tropes: "Gag me with a coup stick" are the first words that appear in the book, followed shortly afterward by an exchange with her mother that includes the title's play on another title, that of Dee Brown's classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and works in Chief Joseph with the witticism, "I will fight no more about putting the toothpaste cap on, forever." The laughter isn't frivolous, Midge suggests, but rather a way of thumbing a nose at death and the dominant culture. There's a lot to fight, of course. One of her essays imagines that before trying on African American culture, the one-time headline grabber Rachel Dolezal was a "pretendian," one of those pretend Indians whose numbers, she reckons, run to about 54% of the population. In another, the author considers other kinds of ethnic border crossings on a trip to Thailand, where she realized that, at least in that context, she was as American as any other American: "big trucks, big talk, big bombs, big money...." She does not, however support Donald Trump, who doesn't fare well in these pages, and she chides her fellow citizens for being ignorant of "racism, sexism, and living and supporting an authoritarian regime." There are a few misses here and there, but mostly Midge hits, and hits hard. If you're wondering why the presence of Andrew Jackson's portrait in the Oval Office is offensive, this is your book.

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September 15, 2019
When Midge says that the general populace is "functionally illiterate when it comes to Native Americans and First Nations people," she's not kidding. (Sometimes, though, she is kidding, but not about that.) While in this collection (mostly essays) she confronts some of the problems her people face (early death, alcoholism, joblessness), she can also be wickedly funny. In one section she sends up The Handmaid's Tale, Silence of the Lambs, pumpkin spice latte, Wonder Woman, and Animal Farm in equal measure. In later sections, she takes on Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving. One final section homes in on the current political climate and includes a priceless poem as if written by the current commander-in-chief. One of her satirical essays, written around the time of the 2016 election, went viral; the only trouble was few understood it as satire. She includes that essay, and an essay about that essay (how very meta!). Her no-b.s., take-no-prisoners approach is likely to resound with twenty-something readers, but the older crowd ought to give Midge a look, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)