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Living on the Borderlines

Stories

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
“Michal’s debut is thoughtful and generous, capturing the fraught experience of being Native American in the modern U.S.” —Publishers Weekly
Both on and off the rez, characters contend with identity as contemporary Haudenosaunee peoples; the stories “cross bloodlines, heart lines, and cultural lines, powerfully charting what it is to be human in a world that works to divide us” (Susan Power, author of Sacred Wilderness).
In Living on the Borderlines, intergenerational memory and trauma slip into everyday life: a teenager struggles to understand her grandmother’s silences, a man contemplates what it means to preserve tradition in the wake of the “disappearing Indian” myth, and an older woman challenges her town’s prejudice while uniting an unlikely family.
With these stories, debut writer Melissa Michal weaves together an understated and contemplative collection exploring what it means to be Indigenous.
“A beautiful window into understanding Indigenous worldviews . . . This book is an unapologetic contemporary perspective of the truth of healing through Indigenous storytelling.” —Sarah Eagle Heart, CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy
“Enlightening and thought-provoking, Michal’s stories are a pleasure to read and absorb.” —Booklist
“Melissa Michal writes . . . with a power that will make you want to read and reread these stories.” —Brooklyn Rail
“A hauntingly beautiful collection of stories of contemporary women and girls who live in the spaces between the reservations and traditional Indigenous territories and rural and urban communities . . . a stunning achievement.” —Nikki Dragone, visiting assistant professor of Native American studies, Dickinson College
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    • Booklist

      February 1, 2019
      In her first story collection, Michal, of Seneca descent, offers powerful images of indigenous life on and off the reservation juxtaposed with painterly descriptions of the natural world. In the opening story, a Mohawk man gazes across the St. Lawrence River, pondering why borders have been forced on his people when such lines never mattered as they traveled from one village to another. A Haida totem carver and his wife, a weaver, are held together by their art and the traditions that infuse their lives, even though she is white. Cultural traditions passed on for generations are woven into each story, whether they are fiercely honored or carelessly discarded in an attempt to fit into the modern, nonindigenous world. This is most graphically described in a story of four siblings raised in a Seneca household who, after their mother's death, finally meet the sister who was given up for adoption as an infant and who was never told of her Seneca heritage. Enlightening and thought-provoking, Michal's stories are a pleasure to read and absorb.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

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  • English

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