The Best Books I Read: Native American Heritage Month

I didn’t do any reading this month (unless you count the election results) so instead of my usual monthly book review, I’m sharing the best books I’ve read about the Native American experience to honor Native American Heritage Month.

Nonfiction

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

A stark account of the mistreatment of Native Americans throughout American history, from colonial days to the present. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. Review

1491 by Charles Mann

A fascinating exploration of what archaeologists and anthropologists have learned about Native American cultures prior to European contact.

Surviving Wounded Knee by David Grua

In December 1890, the US Army massacred hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. This book is the tale of the Lakota fight to have their side of the story told and their dead memorialized. On a larger scale, it’s the story of how unwilling the United States is to reckon with its history of Native American conquest.

A Misplaced Massacre by Ari Kelman

This account follows the efforts to pinpoint the exact location of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and the contentious planning of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Like Surviving Wounded Knee, it also grapples with the US history of violence against Native Americans and the unwillingness of American government and society to recognize the magnitude of that violence.

Fiction

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

When his mother is raped, teenager Joe Coutts takes it into his own hands to find the perpetrator and extract justice. Set on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota, the book is part of Erdrich’s Justice trilogy.

Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

The first two books in Roanhorse’s Sixth World series, Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts were two of the best books I read last year. (Review) The series is set in a post-climate-apocalypse world, where Maggie Hoskin now works as a monster hunter. What sets these books apart is their rich Diné (Navajo) setting. The stories are enjoyable lessons in Diné culture, and I devoured one right after the other.

The Best Book I Read This Month: The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey

In the interest of transparency, I only read one book this month. Thankfully, it was a really good one. The Satapur Moonstone is the second book in Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry series.

The series is set in 1920s India, where Perveen works as a lawyer in her father’s law firm. Her position as an independent, college-educated, professional woman is unusual in her society, but it gives her access to clients that male lawyers could never consider. In this installment of the series, Perveen is asked to help settle a dispute between female royalty one of the independent Indian states.

The mystery was well crafted, and I enjoyed its twists and turns. But what I really liked about this book was the character development. The character building that was done in the series’ first book (The Widows of Malabar Hill) isn’t forgotten. Instead, it is used to provide tension between Perveen and a newcomer in her life. That tension is not completely resolved by the end of the book, and I hope to see that thread continued in Book 3 of the series.

The other aspect of the book that seemed particularly well done was its depiction of the intricacies of political relationships in India at the time of British rule—not just the relationship between the British and Indian leaders but also the way the British presence influenced the relationships among Indian royalty in supposedly independent states. I have not done enough research to know how realistic Massey’s depiction is, but it felt real and as a reader, that’s all I ask for.

The Best Book I Read This Month: Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente

The best book I read this month was the novella Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente. As you might guess from the title, it is a retelling of the fairy tale “Snow White” set in the Old West.

What struck me first, and what I fell in love with, was the story’s narrative voice. It is vibrant and colorful, as if someone were sitting in front of me telling the story aloud.

The cover illustration is equally striking, and the pen-and-ink sketches scattered throughout the book add a nice visual dimension to the storytelling.

The story itself is not a Disney fairy tale, either. It’s dark in places and does not sugarcoat the harshness of life in the Old West. The exploitation, violence, racism, and sexism of the era are key aspects of the characters and story line. In this tale, Snow White is the daughter of an unscrupulous white mining magnate and a Crow woman, and her racial heritage colors the way she is treated, especially by her stepmother. But this is a fairy tale, and after many trials and much tribulation, Snow White does find a Happy Ever After.

The Best Book I Read This Month: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The best book I read this month was a powerful work of nonfiction: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say this was a hard read. Hard not because of the writing style but because of the content. This is not the history that’s presented in school books, except in very token and superficial ways.

The book is relatively short (fewer than 300 pages of narrative text) and well documented. It recounts the mistreatment and murder of Native Americans and Native American efforts to fight back from the founding of the first English colonies to the 20th century.

There’s a tone of anger in Dunbar-Ortiz’s work, which is well-justified given the events she recounts. It was difficult to read the details of the atrocities that white men committed, whether in the name of England, or the United States, or Manifest Destiny, or just plain old white supremacy.

The book does assume that the reader has a working understanding of the major events in US History. For example, it doesn’t explain much about the founding of the colonies of Jamestown or Plymouth. It focuses instead on how the founding and settling of these colonies led to the displacement of and violence against the Native Americans on whose land these colonies were established. There is no fairy tale of Pocahontas here, nor is there a feel good story about Squanto and the first Thanksgiving.

Instead, the recurring themes of white entitlement and the dehumanization of Native Americans are hammered again and again and again. Because white America was relentless in its quest for American Indian land and blood. In many ways, it still is.

This was not a happy read but I believe it is a necessary one, if we are ever going to achieve any kind of social justice, if we have any hope of creating an equitable society.