In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we wanted to highlight some remarkable stories by indigenous authors. Not only are these great book club picks, but they are also a way to introduce your fellow members to Native American culture and the voices of indigenous people. From poetry, environmental essays, even political thrillers, you will find inspiration for any and every book club in this list!
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A New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times Bestseller, Braiding Sweetgrass is a transformative book that inspires ecological consciousness. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on a "journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten to hear their voices. |
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Indian Horse: A Novel by Richard Wagamese Now a major motion picture, produced by Clint Eastwood, Indian Horse is a deeply moving coming-of-age story about resilience. Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibwe youth. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother—and then his home itself. Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey, and he proves to be undeniably gifted. Spare, compact, and rich, Indian Horse is at once a heartbreaking account of a dark chapter in our history and a moving coming-of-age story. |
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Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel McLeod "Affecting and full of heart" (Buzzfeed), Mamaskatch follows Darrel McLeod as he navigates family history and trauma. As a small boy in remote Alberta, McLeod is immersed in his Cree family's history, passed down in the stories of his mother, Bertha. There he is surrounded by her tales of joy and horror—including the cruelty she and her sisters endured in residential school—as well as his many siblings and cousins, and the smells of moose stew and wild peppermint tea. He learns to be fiercely proud of his heritage and to listen to the birds that will guide him throughout his life. But after a series of tragic losses, his home life becomes unstable: he witnesses domestic violence, suffers abuse from his brother-in-law, and grapples with his sexuality. Thrillingly written in a series of fractured vignettes, and unflinchingly honest, Mamaskatch—"It's a wonder!" in Cree—is a heartbreaking account of how traumas are passed down from one generation to the next, and an uplifting story of one individual who overcomes enormous obstacles in pursuit of a fulfilling life. |
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Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages―bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers―be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. |
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The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. |