Reading the Rez

     Contemporary Native Americans seem to be having a moment right now. Oscar-winning New Zealand director, screenwriter, and comedian recently co-created a television series called "Reservation Dogs" that is getting rave reviews for its stereotype-breaking comedic take on the lives of four Native American teens.  (It's a great show; catch it on Hulu.) There are a number of breakthrough novels by Native American authors that have appeared on best book lists recently, and Book Tok and #Bookstagram both offer Native American book dealers, reviewers, writers,  and readers new venues for discussing Native American literature. 

    In the past, I've already blogged about  a few authors who have written popular book series set, at least partially, near and on Indian reservations. While these authors are not Native American, their books reflect a real authenticity. Perhaps the best known series is the Leaphorn and Chee series, consisting of 25 novels so far, written by Tony Hillerman and his daughter Anne Hillerman, who took up the series when her father, Tony, died.  In the series, Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito are members of the Navajo Nation police force; the Navajo Nation is the largest land area retained by an indigenous nation in the US, encompassing portions of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Each of the Leaphorn mysteries involve elements of Navajo culture and lots indigenous characters, and the detectives are usually forced to navigate in the indigenous and non-indigenous worlds in order to solve the mysteries. I've read all of the Leaphorn and Chee series, and I recommend them for both the mystery reader and for those who are looking to learn more about Navajo culture.

    Another series which I've enjoyed and recommend is the Sheriff Walt Longmire series, by Craig Johnson, the source of the tv series "Longmire."  Longmire is a sheriff in rural Wyoming in fictional Absaroka County, named after the real Absaroka (Also know as Apsaalooke or Crow) tribe and mountains. To date, there are 17 Longmire novels, and the sheriff often finds himself dealing with Native American characters and reservation affairs, but the reservation is the Cheyenne reservation, not the Absaroka, for whom the county is named. There are several recurring Native American characters throughout the series, but the sheriff's best friend and oft-times partner is Henry Standing Bear, who ahs been Sheriff Longmire's boon companion since high school football days and through their service in the Vietnam War. (By the way, I love the audiobook versions of the Longmire books because of the great narrator, George Guidall, but I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the tv adaptation.)

    In the past few months, however, I have read the chance to read three very good books by Native American authors and reflective of contemporary reservation life. The first was Midnight Son by James Dommek Jr, Josephine Holtzman, and Isaac Kestenbaum. It is an Audible original and very much feels like a podcast, and it also stands out from the others because it is the true story of an Alaskan native man named Teddy Kyle Smith who was starting to get noticed as an actor in small independent films when he apparently went on a crime spree in the Alaskan wilderness. The story follows Dommek on his quest to find out about the real Smith and to try to understand what happened. It was a very interesting story, well told/narrated by Dommek himself, and it delves into Native Alaskan culture and folklore.

    Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a member of the Lakota nation, and Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, a member of the Ojibwe Nation, have a lot in common. They've both gotten great reviews and a lot of attention. Firekeeper's Daughter is set to become a Netflix series. They are both first novels for their authors. They both deal with major blights on Native American reservations: drugs, crime, hopelessness, despair, and exploitation. They also portray a broken reservation system, and the willful neglect of the Federal government and the Federal government's unwillingness to prosecute crime on reservations. And even though the Lakota and Ojibwe reservations are miles apart and homes to different nations, it was interesting to see similarities in slang words used on the reservations and other cultural elements.

    Firekeeper's Daughter is actually a Young Adult novel, and it seems like the author threw in every popular element of young adult fiction: sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, sports, a strong determined teen girl who just doesn't fit in, teenage angst, clueless (or evil) adults, etc. Eighteen-year old Daunis Fontaine finds herself involved in a federal drug investigation on the Ojibwe reservation, and she becomes an undercover informant for the FBI, a decision which finds her dragged into a very dangerous operation.

    Winter Counts  is also about a teen ager, a boy this time, who finds himself in the center of a dangerous undercover federal investigation of a drug ring that has introduced heroin onto the Rosebud Lakota reservation, but he is not the main character. The main character is the boy's uncle, Virgil Wounded Horse. Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the reservation. Because the enforcement of laws on reservations is, to put it mildly, haphazard or non existent, people hire Wounded Horse to exact revenge on people who have wronged them.  This is apparently a real thing on reservations. Wounded Horse is dragged into the drug investigation when his nephew overdoses on heroin. Winter Counts is an interesting look into reservation life, and it feels like the author plans a Wounded Horse series of books.

Arrival of the Conquistadors

         September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month. Why does it start in the middle of the month? September 15 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the declaration of independence of five Hispanic countries:  Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, who all declared independence in 1821.  Hispanic heritage, of course goes back to the conquest of Latin America by the fortune- and glory- hunting Spanish conquistadors, who transformed Latin America and the world. One might even argue that the conquest of Latin America was the biggest transformation in world history. As a result of Spanish conquest, millions of people died and were enslaved - American and African, whole civilizations and cultures were destroyed, and the stolen riches made Spain a superpower, directly affecting the political and economic structures of Europe for centuries. They initiated the Columbian Exchange, which transformed the world biologically. And, over 500 years later, Latin American culture still reflects its Spanish conquest through language, religion, architecture, political structure, and arts. 

    Here are a few books I recommend.

    

    In 1527, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca joined an expedition led by Panfilo de Narvaez, with the mission to explore La Florida, the southeastern part of the U.S. today. The expedition consisted of 600 men in five ships at its start. Unfortunately, the expedition met with one disaster after another. Storms, shipwrecks, and Indian conflicts, had reduced the expedition to 15 men, including de Vaca, in November 1528, probably near modern-day Galveston Texas. These fifteen were captured and enslaved by various tribes over the next four years; eventually, only de Vaca, two other Spaniards, and an enslaved African survived. The four men made an escape and wandered for the next four years across the southwestern U.S., interacting with various tribes. De Vaca even developed a reputation as a trader and healer among the tribes they interacted with. Finally, they reached a Spanish settlement in northern Mexico and reached Mexico City in 1536. After returning home to Spain in 1537, de Vaca wrote about his experience. The result is A Land So Strange. It's a remarkable survival story.

    Conquistador's Wake is about an archaeologist's search  for the trail of another conquistador who explored Florida and the Southeast, Hernando de Soto. If you are interested in the work of archaeologists, this book is for you. Blanton's work on recently discovered Spanish sites in Georgia challenges previously held beliefs about De Soto and his route, and he makes a convincing case.

    If you're looking for really good and respectable histories of the conquests of the Aztecs and the Incas specifically, these three recent books fit the bill. Conquest by Hugh Thomas and When Montezuma Met Cortes by Matthew Restall and Kim MacQuarrie's The Last Days of the Incas.

    If you're looking for a classic, The Broken Spears is for you. Not only is it recognized as a classic about the conquest of the Aztecs, but it is also unique because it tells the story from the Aztec point of view, not just relying on Spanish accounts. As we all know, history has many sides, and the indigenous view of the the Spanish conquistadors was too long ignored.

    Buddy Levy has written two books about conquistadors,  Conquistadors and River of Darkness. Conquistador is about Hernan Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs. River of Darkness is the story of the  search for El Dorado - the legendary city of gold. In 1541, Pizarro, conqueror of the Incas, and Francisco Orellana set off from Quito Ecuador to find the treasure. The two men decided to split their forces after facing setback after setback. Pizarro eventually returned to safety, but Orellana and his men face a much longer trek, eventually becoming the first known group to navigate the entire length of the Amazon River. It was also Orellana who named the river, inspired by clashes with Indians along their journey. Indian women fought alongside men, and Orellana likened them to the Amazon female warriors of Greek mythology.  A word of caution: Levy's work has been called out for being inaccurate and too politically correct by some reviewers. They were not my favorite books, but I found them readable.

(Salvador Dali, The Discovery of America, one of my favorite Dali paintings)

Watership Down: Gen X'ers Epic ?

         I can count on one hand the number of books that I've read more than once; there are just too many new and different books out there to read. A book has to be extra special for me to even think about going back to it. On the other hand, I know some people who can read the same book many times. A while back (May 9, to be exact), I used Richard Adams' birthday with a picture of his first novel, Watership Down, for my Histocrats Book of the day post on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. (If you aren't aware, I post a historic event for each day with a pic and maybe a blurb about a book that relates to the event. Most of the books are books that I've read.) In my post, I said that Watership Down  was one of my childhood favorites, and maybe it deserved a re-read forty or so years later. Well, I did, and what a great read it was!

    Adams wrote Watership Down only after his daughters begged him to publish it. It all started with stories that he told his children about a warren of rabbits.  After lots of rejections, he finally found a publisher, and it immediately became a phenomenon, selling over a million copies in a few years. And I decided to listen to the book myself, this time around. Audible has a great unabridged audio version, read by former Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi. Everything about it was perfect. Capaldi is a great narrator, and,  obviously since the saga started as an oral story, hearing it told/read aloud was the way to go for me.

    If you're not familiar with the plot, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? Kidding. Slightly. The action of the book takes place over the course of a summer in the English countryside. A rabbit gifted with clairvoyance sees a disastrous future for his warren. He convinces his brother and few other rabbits to leave and strike out for a new safer location. The book tells their story. As I read/listened, I was reminded of high school literature classes and the many epics that I learned about and read: Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Iliad,  and Odyssey, for example, and more modern books that have been called American epic novels, like Moby Dick, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and other  big sweeping series like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,  and A Song of Fire and Ice, for instance. Watership Down, I think, checks off the boxes of epic-ness. So, is Watership Down the epic novel of Generation X, those born roughly between 1965 and 1980?

    OK, OK, I know that originally epic was only used to refer to long heroic poems, but the definition of epic has loosened up considerably over the years to include other genres, like novels and films, so I'm using the term a little loosely, but take away the poetry, and I think Watership still fits.   

    I don't know that there's a definitive list of characteristics of an epic, but there are a few lists out there that are similar.

1) Plot centers around a Hero of Unbelievable Stature.   While Hazel might start out as a run of the mill, average rabbit, and he doesn't seem to have any extraordinary talents or strengths, he definitely grows into the role that he would never have imagined for himself, Chief Rabbit. By the end of the book, he is viewed as a founder by future generations.

2) Involves deeds of superhuman - superrabbit, in this case - strength and valor.  Like I said in number one, Hazel is not super strong, or even fast, but he does have a strong intelligence and strong leadership qualities, and he unquestionably has a great deal of courage. Bigwig also demonstrates courage, power, and strength.

3) Vast Setting. Okay, maybe the rabbits don't travel into space or over huge deserts or mountain rages, but, for rabbits, a couple of dozen miles is a huge trek. They explore new landforms that they have never experienced before, and they interact with new rabbits and other animals with whom they have not had contact in their lives. 

4) Involves supernatural and-or otherworldly forces. Fiver definitely is in touch with supernatural forces, with the ability to see visions of the future and to sense dangers. Hyzenthlay, a doe who joins the warren, also has the gift of future sight. Adams also creates an entire mythology for rabbits, and the book includes several stories told about the mischievous El-ahrairah, the trickster prince of the first rabbits and his companion Rabscuttle as they constantly outsmart Prince Rainbow the lord of the animals.  There are also visits from the Black Rabbit of Inle, the grim reaper of sorts who accompanies rabbits in their deaths. 

5) Sustained elevation of style. The language and style Adams uses are definitely elevated, perfect for oral storytelling, which makes perfect sense because the book's genesis was oral storytelling. Like Tolkien did for his characters, Adams also went to the trouble of creating a language for the rabbits, as well as names for all the characters. Among the rabbits, storytelling is an honored tradition, and storytellers are greatly admired and enjoy high status in the warren. Listening to Peter Capaldi read the book really took my enjoyment of the book to the next level. Even though it is not a poem, Watership Down is darn near as close to poetry as prose can get.

    Watership Down is page after page of adventure, battles, and narrow escapes. It was published in 1972, and I was born in 1966. I can't remember when I read the book, but I reckon I was 10 or 12, and I remember loving it then. The first animated movie version came out in 1978; I'm pretty sure I saw it, but I'm not sure where -either in a theater or at my public library, as part of a summer film series. I do remember it being intense, and I can understand people now who can't believe it was shown to kids. Hey, children of the '60s and '70s were different creatures than later generations. As I'm looking at movie trailers and other videos on Youtube, I have to admit the movie adaptations (1978 and 2018 by the BBC - on Netflix) do seem even more brutal than the book. Maybe that's just because it's visual?

    So what's the point of all this? Is Watership Down an epic? Do I want to talk about a great book of my childhood? Do I want to encourage people read it, and maybe (if you're up to it) watch one of the movies? Do I want to encourage people to re-read books they really love?

Yeah, sure.

1978 Trailer

2018 Trailer

 

    

Author Spotlight: Nathaniel Philbrick

         Nathaniel Philbrick's latest book, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and his Legacy, is set to be released on September 14, and I've already pre-ordered my copy.  It seems to be a bit of a departure for him, but the description makes it sound like it's right up my alley: a historical travelogue. He and his wife setout in 2018 to follow routes traveled by George Washington as he navigated the unknown as first president of a brand new country and brand new form of government, one that had really never been tried before, successfully. Philbrick is one of my favorite writers, and I'm sure that this book will be insightful and very relevant for us in 2021.

    Philbrick is an award-winning and best-selling author of the narrative nonfiction genre, and he's written articles for numerous magazines. Born and living in New England, he has a true love of the sea and of sailing that comes through the pages of his books, but he writes about other topics as well, with the same skill.  I love his rich, detailed narrative style. It's dense, and it might require more attention than some other books, but it's always worth it. If you're interested in New England history, I highly recommend Mayflower, about the Pilgrims' voyage and settlement at Plymouth, and In the Heart of the Sea, the story of the whaler Essex, which was sunk by a whale, leaving the surviving crewmen drifting in a lifeboat and forced to result to cannibalism, inspiring Herman Melville to write Moby Dick.  For more info, his website is https://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/ .