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Mother
A stunning, multimorphic work of poetry and prose about Indigenous identity
mother is a work rooted in an intimate an Indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. As an adult finding her way back to her origins, our unnamed narrator begins to put the pieces of her birth family's history together through the stories told to her by her mother, father, sister, and brother, all of whom remained on the reservation where she was born. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of their community builds, raising profound questions about adoption, inheritance, and Indigenous identity in America.
Through poetic vignettes whose unconventional forms mirror the nonlinear, patchwork process of constructing a sense of self, m.s. RedCherries has crafted an indelible and utterly original work about the winding roads that lead us home.
mother is a work rooted in an intimate an Indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. As an adult finding her way back to her origins, our unnamed narrator begins to put the pieces of her birth family's history together through the stories told to her by her mother, father, sister, and brother, all of whom remained on the reservation where she was born. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of their community builds, raising profound questions about adoption, inheritance, and Indigenous identity in America.
Through poetic vignettes whose unconventional forms mirror the nonlinear, patchwork process of constructing a sense of self, m.s. RedCherries has crafted an indelible and utterly original work about the winding roads that lead us home.
144 pages, Paperback
Published July 16, 2024
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November 21, 2024
**Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in poetry.**
There are many winding roads that can be followed on the journey to ourselves, and identity can often be an elusive place that resists easy location upon the map of life. This is so much more for those with identities bearing the weight of lengthy histories resisting erasure. ‘america takes / and peels away’ Cheyenne poet m.s. RedCherries writes in her collection, mother, and the attempt to piece together an identity against the erosion of oppression and violence against Indigenous peoples makes for a powerful thematic heart within the collection. A finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for poetry, mother is a journey through the past and present piecing together family histories, stories and legacies centering on Cheyenne women and their mothers amidst organizational oppressions in the US like the horrors of residential schools and the depressed economies that plague reservation life. Like the stories pieced together to be passed down, the collection forms a patchwork image of indigenous life and the family history of the speaker (or speakers) while searching for birth parents and trying to hold fast to a queer, indigenous identity in a society that meets it with aggression. A powerful and poetically moving collection from a bold and inventive voice.
america never looked for us
I forget my name and it turns me gold
canned heat in winter is warm
when I find you and
listen to
all we’ve become.
can you dream in color
if you were not born in color?
you once told me we could never separate
being Native from
the original
big migration
into
you’re in america now
As the title might lead you to expect, mothers play a large role in the collection. We have a speaker sent to a residential school as their mother dies in a mental hospital, or the speaker who is searching for the history of her mother after having grown up adopted by a non-indigenous family. The collection reads like a hybrid between poetry and essay, moving through multiple styles and voices in fresh and kaleidoscopic ways. ‘I'm trying to resist being categorized in a certain genre,’ RedCherries said in an interview for Chapter House Journal, ‘there's pressure for Native people to define themselves by other outside forces instead of defining themselves for themselves.’ In her way of subverting expectations of genre to tell her own story in her own way (it is autobiographical, but she says it also contains ‘fictional elements. I would say, it's 50/50’). Being able to define herself is a large theme in the collection, but also a strong belief she has about storytelling as an indigenous writer in general.
Drawing on a long history of oral storytelling, this collection is largely written as an examination of stories told to the speaker that are amalgamated into a larger impression of her family history. And for much of the collection, that history revolves around her mother, such as she writes in the poem only as old as we’ve been told:
Her mother, the proudest and bravest Indian I knew, was ‘born into a place crumbled between world,’ during ‘an unkind century’ for those of indigenous heritage. While this is a collection that attempts to piece together a portrait of loss, the search for community, and the exploration of identity it is all set against a backdrop of a hostile socio-political landscape that sharply informs upon the themes. ‘I’ve been told it was surprising that the narrator doesn’t hold more anger towards her mother for her adoption,’ she says in her interview but reminds us that this anger would be misdirected as the mother’s actions are only a symptom of the actual problem:
In finding tomorrow she writes that ‘t has been said that Indians want to be left alone, but never actually be alone,’ a direct call out of the systemic oppressions against indigenous identities that lurk everywhere in this collection. ‘i can / be as Indian / as you let me be,’ she writes in the poem red is the only color I see and the need to either fall into typecasting or erase her heritage entirely is a constant threat from society in the long history or indigenous erasure. In an untitled poem the speaker describes fear of official mail worried it will state her citizenship has been ‘revoked for being Indian’ and the repercussions of the residential schools are felt for generations to come in several poems. Another poem lists all the names of those buried in Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, three long daunting columns of names and dates in which ‘I read your name.’ The threats are everywhere and make for a frightening landscape to search for your identity.
‘We were all small, interred crumbs, uncertain crumbs, unsure crumbs, interrupted crumbs.’
In this uneasy social reality is also depictions of the ills that can befall those in reservation life. One speaker, a queer woman, finds herself butting against the homophobia of locals until they decide to respect her marriage to another woman because ‘A union of two Cheyenne women was understood to/ be sacred because Cheyenne women are sacred.’ Plagued by the batterments of life we also find that many decide leaving is easier than staying, though walking away from family makes oneself a ghost haunting their own life.
Though not everything in this collection is bruised and harrowing as RedCherries filters memories through a lot of tenderness as well, such as a memory of her mother in which ‘I catch your / smile before / you catch mine’ in the rearview mirror as a child on a summer drive. There is an elegance to her prose that really grabs the heart at every turn.
‘country eat country
an apocalypse in miniature’
Through poetic explorations of family, loss, and finding an identity while beleaguered by generational trauma and violence, mother is a powerful collection. Certainly deserving of its spot on the National Book Award shortlist, this is an exciting and shapeshifting collection that explores the way we are all a collision of history and the present and RedCherries delivers it all in such gorgeous poetry.
4.5/5
‘When life hits you like that, you’ll look in the mirror and see what it’s done.’
There are many winding roads that can be followed on the journey to ourselves, and identity can often be an elusive place that resists easy location upon the map of life. This is so much more for those with identities bearing the weight of lengthy histories resisting erasure. ‘america takes / and peels away’ Cheyenne poet m.s. RedCherries writes in her collection, mother, and the attempt to piece together an identity against the erosion of oppression and violence against Indigenous peoples makes for a powerful thematic heart within the collection. A finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for poetry, mother is a journey through the past and present piecing together family histories, stories and legacies centering on Cheyenne women and their mothers amidst organizational oppressions in the US like the horrors of residential schools and the depressed economies that plague reservation life. Like the stories pieced together to be passed down, the collection forms a patchwork image of indigenous life and the family history of the speaker (or speakers) while searching for birth parents and trying to hold fast to a queer, indigenous identity in a society that meets it with aggression. A powerful and poetically moving collection from a bold and inventive voice.
america never looked for us
I forget my name and it turns me gold
canned heat in winter is warm
when I find you and
listen to
all we’ve become.
can you dream in color
if you were not born in color?
you once told me we could never separate
being Native from
the original
big migration
into
you’re in america now
As the title might lead you to expect, mothers play a large role in the collection. We have a speaker sent to a residential school as their mother dies in a mental hospital, or the speaker who is searching for the history of her mother after having grown up adopted by a non-indigenous family. The collection reads like a hybrid between poetry and essay, moving through multiple styles and voices in fresh and kaleidoscopic ways. ‘I'm trying to resist being categorized in a certain genre,’ RedCherries said in an interview for Chapter House Journal, ‘there's pressure for Native people to define themselves by other outside forces instead of defining themselves for themselves.’ In her way of subverting expectations of genre to tell her own story in her own way (it is autobiographical, but she says it also contains ‘fictional elements. I would say, it's 50/50’). Being able to define herself is a large theme in the collection, but also a strong belief she has about storytelling as an indigenous writer in general.
‘Poetry and modern fiction have long been examined through different lenses, where its consequences have resulted in standardized parameters of how to interact, engage, or view the work itself—as determined by the Western literary canon. As Indigenous writers, shouldn't we be the ones empowered to make those decisions for ourselves and define what our writing is or isn’t? The way that we tell stories is completely different from what the Western literary canon considers or defines “stories” . And so, I encourage all Indigenous writers to question any authority others may have over their work and begin to define and build the Indigenous literary canon for themselves.’
Drawing on a long history of oral storytelling, this collection is largely written as an examination of stories told to the speaker that are amalgamated into a larger impression of her family history. And for much of the collection, that history revolves around her mother, such as she writes in the poem only as old as we’ve been told:
‘You are the reason // I always listened to You told me whole stories in pieces and sometimes I would get lost in the way you speak. Your hushed tones and soft inflection had me listening closely always afraid I wouldn’t hear or understand. But I always did. From the pieces of memory I have left I have made your stories whole.’
Her mother, the proudest and bravest Indian I knew, was ‘born into a place crumbled between world,’ during ‘an unkind century’ for those of indigenous heritage. While this is a collection that attempts to piece together a portrait of loss, the search for community, and the exploration of identity it is all set against a backdrop of a hostile socio-political landscape that sharply informs upon the themes. ‘I’ve been told it was surprising that the narrator doesn’t hold more anger towards her mother for her adoption,’ she says in her interview but reminds us that this anger would be misdirected as the mother’s actions are only a symptom of the actual problem:
‘If I had to be angry at anyone, it would be America for causing the circumstances that gave way to my adoption. Like in the story, the narrator starts interrogating who's responsible for her circumstances, and it is America…America's responsible for the generational terror that it's given to Native people. And we're still here dealing with their genocidal policies. Our existence is protest because America has tried to kill and dismantle every part of our culture and being, starting with the actual killing of our people, and then onto the reservation and boarding school era of family separation, dislocation, and relocation. So, if there is a culprit, if there is a “person” responsible—--it's America at large.’
In finding tomorrow she writes that ‘t has been said that Indians want to be left alone, but never actually be alone,’ a direct call out of the systemic oppressions against indigenous identities that lurk everywhere in this collection. ‘i can / be as Indian / as you let me be,’ she writes in the poem red is the only color I see and the need to either fall into typecasting or erase her heritage entirely is a constant threat from society in the long history or indigenous erasure. In an untitled poem the speaker describes fear of official mail worried it will state her citizenship has been ‘revoked for being Indian’ and the repercussions of the residential schools are felt for generations to come in several poems. Another poem lists all the names of those buried in Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, three long daunting columns of names and dates in which ‘I read your name.’ The threats are everywhere and make for a frightening landscape to search for your identity.
‘We were all small, interred crumbs, uncertain crumbs, unsure crumbs, interrupted crumbs.’
In this uneasy social reality is also depictions of the ills that can befall those in reservation life. One speaker, a queer woman, finds herself butting against the homophobia of locals until they decide to respect her marriage to another woman because ‘A union of two Cheyenne women was understood to/ be sacred because Cheyenne women are sacred.’ Plagued by the batterments of life we also find that many decide leaving is easier than staying, though walking away from family makes oneself a ghost haunting their own life.
‘After my father left my mother and went to oklahoma, my father spent the majority of my life looking and looking and looking for me. He looked for me in my sister, he looked for me in my brother, he looked for me in my mother, he looked for me in the phone book, and when he found me, he looked for himself in me.’
Though not everything in this collection is bruised and harrowing as RedCherries filters memories through a lot of tenderness as well, such as a memory of her mother in which ‘I catch your / smile before / you catch mine’ in the rearview mirror as a child on a summer drive. There is an elegance to her prose that really grabs the heart at every turn.
‘country eat country
an apocalypse in miniature’
Through poetic explorations of family, loss, and finding an identity while beleaguered by generational trauma and violence, mother is a powerful collection. Certainly deserving of its spot on the National Book Award shortlist, this is an exciting and shapeshifting collection that explores the way we are all a collision of history and the present and RedCherries delivers it all in such gorgeous poetry.
4.5/5
‘When life hits you like that, you’ll look in the mirror and see what it’s done.’
May 3, 2025
Through this collection of poetry, I felt a sense of the isolation and sadness that ms.redcherries describes. Her Indian experience in America is that of a being part of two different worlds, Cheyenne and non Indian . The reach for her birth mother and her whole Indian heritage speak of her yearnings to not be alone. The place Indian people occupy in America is less than ought to be. There is great loss,separation,meloncony. I'm left with a small peek in her world and see how she is here and part of a vast past and eternal future.
July 30, 2024
I am not great at writing reviews, but if I had to sum this up in one word it would be, poignant. I went through a cornucopia of emotions during this short read.
I also recommend listening to the audiobook. Hearing the words in the author's literal voice made me feel a deeper connection to the story. Great job!
I also recommend listening to the audiobook. Hearing the words in the author's literal voice made me feel a deeper connection to the story. Great job!
April 20, 2025
"Throughout my younger entirety, I always felt like I had something to prove to others about being, something that made it difficult to dance around the continental division of my existence."
Mother is beautiful, tragic, and comforting. I am in awe of M.S. RedCherries' work. Her collection almost reads like a novel, with the story's nonlinear structure furthering its themes of cultural disconnection. The poems explore compelling questions about indigenous identity in America. What does it mean to be an unwilling outsider to your people? How can you heal the scars of injustice that plague your history? How do you make your country accept your existence and history? Often, the truth is buried deep, but can emerge through powerful declarations of the self.
Mother is beautiful, tragic, and comforting. I am in awe of M.S. RedCherries' work. Her collection almost reads like a novel, with the story's nonlinear structure furthering its themes of cultural disconnection. The poems explore compelling questions about indigenous identity in America. What does it mean to be an unwilling outsider to your people? How can you heal the scars of injustice that plague your history? How do you make your country accept your existence and history? Often, the truth is buried deep, but can emerge through powerful declarations of the self.
December 2, 2024
Gorgeous.
Read
May 2, 2025beautiful and hard to review. left me somewhat cold but that's probably on me in part
April 5, 2024
This was really powerful stuff. I gobbled it up in a sitting but will certainly need to revisit to get into its intricacies and intimacies. What a beautiful way to tell a story (stories). Totally grateful for the DRC and am recommending this to everyone when it comes out in July!
April 23, 2025
Some things are written with such heartfelt emotion that it radiates off the page. Mother falls into that category.
March 26, 2025
Really cool powerful book. Poetry and prose marry in a careful examination of lineage in the wake of colonial violence.
October 24, 2024
Emotional and thoughtful collection narrated by a Cheyenne woman, the oldest of three siblings. She was the only raised off the reservation, being raised in an open adoption, in a nice family in Utah--raised Baptist, the only Indian person she knew.
These poems vary in form--some are short poems, choppy, others are longer with sentences, others are essentially prose. All feature the narrator grappling with returning to her reservation and getting to know her younger brother and sister, her parents, her more distant family, her culture, and the place she feels she should have known. How she feels so out of place and so perfectly at home.
Very, very good.
These poems vary in form--some are short poems, choppy, others are longer with sentences, others are essentially prose. All feature the narrator grappling with returning to her reservation and getting to know her younger brother and sister, her parents, her more distant family, her culture, and the place she feels she should have known. How she feels so out of place and so perfectly at home.
Very, very good.
December 1, 2024
The following comments are not my original work but are comments by other authors or critics, as well as the author, editor and/or publisher worth repeating here:
“A stunning, multimorphic work of poetry and prose about indigenous identity. mother is a work rooted in an intimate fracture: an indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. As an adult finding her way back to her origins, our unnamed narrator begins to put the pieces of her birth family’s history together through the stories told to her by her mother, father, sister, and brother, all of whom remain on the reservation where she was born. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of her community emerges, raising profound questions about adoption inheritance and indigenous identity in America.
“Through poetic vignettes whose unconventional forms mirror the nonlinear, patchwork process of constructing a sense of self, m.s. RedCherries has crafted an indelible an early original work about the winding roads that lead to home.”
“Exquisite, part elegy and part rallying cry, while mother examines the systemic injustice done to indigenous people this is more than just a mediation on generational wrong. RedCherries has rendered an intimate portrait of inheritance — from the spiritual to the genetic — that is, ultimately, a testimony of empowerment in lush language, that feels gorgeous and fresh.”
“An extraordinary debut by an innovative new voice in Native American literature. While there is a profound sense of loss and trauma in these pages, there is also a pulsing abundance of Indian resilience and life.”
“A stunning, multimorphic work of poetry and prose about indigenous identity. mother is a work rooted in an intimate fracture: an indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. As an adult finding her way back to her origins, our unnamed narrator begins to put the pieces of her birth family’s history together through the stories told to her by her mother, father, sister, and brother, all of whom remain on the reservation where she was born. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of her community emerges, raising profound questions about adoption inheritance and indigenous identity in America.
“Through poetic vignettes whose unconventional forms mirror the nonlinear, patchwork process of constructing a sense of self, m.s. RedCherries has crafted an indelible an early original work about the winding roads that lead to home.”
“Exquisite, part elegy and part rallying cry, while mother examines the systemic injustice done to indigenous people this is more than just a mediation on generational wrong. RedCherries has rendered an intimate portrait of inheritance — from the spiritual to the genetic — that is, ultimately, a testimony of empowerment in lush language, that feels gorgeous and fresh.”
“An extraordinary debut by an innovative new voice in Native American literature. While there is a profound sense of loss and trauma in these pages, there is also a pulsing abundance of Indian resilience and life.”
August 30, 2024
4.5 stars
September 28, 2024
Recent Iowa Writers' Workshop grads seem to produce very interesting work.
November 16, 2024
3.5 stars
November 21, 2024
as painful as it is beautiful.
November 9, 2025
The namelessness and pastiche come together to make a point that feels somewhat obvious and not especially compelling, even if it effectively communicates the horrible erasure of those indigenous to American land. Most affecting in its moments of precision, which can feel disparate among a lot of glossing, with lines like "he smiled at me in the way that he does."
Read
May 11, 2025"I was born and only from you"
"will you look for me at all" was my favorite poem in this collection but overall this book was really fantastic. I will probably continue to look to this book as I continue in my own creative endeavors.
"will you look for me at all" was my favorite poem in this collection but overall this book was really fantastic. I will probably continue to look to this book as I continue in my own creative endeavors.
June 12, 2024
This was so profound, and I am so thankful to Penguin Books, m.s. RedCherries, and PRH Audio for the #free audiobook before this baby hits shelves on July 16, 2024.
m.s. RedCherries delivers a prolific account of Indigenous emotions and feelings centered around the unlawful treatment of their people since the dawn of time. Told through poetic verses, we hear stories of generational trauma, loss, heartbreak, and stagnance like no other. I could listen to our author speak all day; I was truly brought to tears and lured into a state of awe the entire time.
m.s. RedCherries delivers a prolific account of Indigenous emotions and feelings centered around the unlawful treatment of their people since the dawn of time. Told through poetic verses, we hear stories of generational trauma, loss, heartbreak, and stagnance like no other. I could listen to our author speak all day; I was truly brought to tears and lured into a state of awe the entire time.
August 29, 2024
In mesmerizing poetry and prose the author tells the story of one Cheyenne family. She describes the destruction wrought by the Bureau of Indian Affairs when it ripped children from their families to Americanize them and stripped them of their Indian identity. She also discusses the efforts of the youngest daughter to find her Native American family and reclaim her roots and her heritage after being raised by a white family in Texas.
The book describes both the trauma of being an Indian in America, and their resilience in sparse lyrical language.
The book describes both the trauma of being an Indian in America, and their resilience in sparse lyrical language.
October 29, 2025
In this collection of poetic vignettes, the unconventional format is intended to “mirror the nonlinear, patchwork process of constructing a sense of self,” as the back-cover blurb states, through a collage of oral histories, family lore, and poem-like shards of imagined pasts & futures and fragments of the present. Readers seem to be expected to pick up the pieces, make sense of what’s been unearthed, interpret the artifacts, and fill in the lacunae. Since the prosaic text is largely devoid of poetic images, perhaps another literary form would have better suited this material, such as memoir or creative nonfiction, to tell this story about interracial adoption, cultural inheritance, and indigenous identity in America.
It was the stories that brought us back to life and kept us alive forever and ever.
—from “under an illuminated same,” p. 58
Throughout my younger entirety, I always felt like I had something to prove to others—about being, something that made it difficult to dance around the continental division of my existence. And when my mother gave me up to be a family, a thousand miles away from my home, alone and apart as an only child, in a place that felt anti-Indian because I was the only Indian, I’d ask—
mother,
where did we all go?”
—from “closing my eyes to see straight,” p. 80
Favorite Texts;
“only as old as we’ve been told”
“i lost all the nights”
“closing my eyes to see straight”
“finding tomorrow”
“will you look for me at all”
“riding the highway 212”
“searching the middle for you”
It was the stories that brought us back to life and kept us alive forever and ever.
—from “under an illuminated same,” p. 58
Throughout my younger entirety, I always felt like I had something to prove to others—about being, something that made it difficult to dance around the continental division of my existence. And when my mother gave me up to be a family, a thousand miles away from my home, alone and apart as an only child, in a place that felt anti-Indian because I was the only Indian, I’d ask—
mother,
where did we all go?”
—from “closing my eyes to see straight,” p. 80
Favorite Texts;
“only as old as we’ve been told”
“i lost all the nights”
“closing my eyes to see straight”
“finding tomorrow”
“will you look for me at all”
“riding the highway 212”
“searching the middle for you”
August 27, 2024
ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
A collection of poetry and prose about native culture, childhood to adulthood, and finding your family and roots. The poetry felt the most concrete of the collection, and while the prose was well written, it didn't hold up against the rich metaphor and punchiness of the poetry.
RedCherries uses the term "Indian" and while I don't like using the term and prefer to use "Native American" or "Indigenous" that is not all native peoples preference and I will respect their perspective.
I enjoyed the introspection about what makes someone "truly" native and what culture "truly" feels like. As someone who is a white native, it hit home for me as it can be hard feeling like you are truly part of a culture you come from.
My favorite poems are: "america never looked for us", "red is the only color i see", and "new mass."
A collection of poetry and prose about native culture, childhood to adulthood, and finding your family and roots. The poetry felt the most concrete of the collection, and while the prose was well written, it didn't hold up against the rich metaphor and punchiness of the poetry.
RedCherries uses the term "Indian" and while I don't like using the term and prefer to use "Native American" or "Indigenous" that is not all native peoples preference and I will respect their perspective.
I enjoyed the introspection about what makes someone "truly" native and what culture "truly" feels like. As someone who is a white native, it hit home for me as it can be hard feeling like you are truly part of a culture you come from.
My favorite poems are: "america never looked for us", "red is the only color i see", and "new mass."
April 17, 2025
this is what kafka really meant when he wished to be a red indian
Every now and again, you examine the ground before you, very jerkily, because you are not on a racing horse, but behind the wheel of a chevy malibu on a dirt road on a reservation. You are leaning with the wind because you want your hair to cover your eyes, so you could pretend you were on a racing horse. You are instantly alert because your brother, who is driving, could hit a racing horse who may be crossing the road before you. You are not wearing any spurs—you do not need any reins. The racing horse will take you to a place where the land that was once gone is ours now back and your horse’s neck and head are actually yours.
Every now and again, you examine the ground before you, very jerkily, because you are not on a racing horse, but behind the wheel of a chevy malibu on a dirt road on a reservation. You are leaning with the wind because you want your hair to cover your eyes, so you could pretend you were on a racing horse. You are instantly alert because your brother, who is driving, could hit a racing horse who may be crossing the road before you. You are not wearing any spurs—you do not need any reins. The racing horse will take you to a place where the land that was once gone is ours now back and your horse’s neck and head are actually yours.
December 8, 2024
A moving memoir in prose poems or essay vignettes (I didn't really read this as poetry) of a Cheyenne woman adopted out of her family as a baby into a white one who is reconnecting with her birth family and making sense of her identity, having grown up away from this community, and her family's longer history, having been forced into and separated by BIA schools a generation back.
RedCherries captures really well these scenes with her family, the stories told or talked around, the silences in loving but relearning someone, trying to piece together the histories they each weren't present for or the history that could have been.
RedCherries captures really well these scenes with her family, the stories told or talked around, the silences in loving but relearning someone, trying to piece together the histories they each weren't present for or the history that could have been.
December 22, 2024
Mother asks why did things happen this way? Who am I and what does it mean to be Indian?
Mother is the answer to these questions.
Stories, memories, dreams, dogs, alcohol, water, diet coke.
“My kind of Indian has to be self-defined It’s whatever I do, how I do it.”
Mother is also exemplary of grief connoting love and connection. Mother is feeling over describing the feeling. “And when I dream, I remember. And when I remember, I dream, wondering if it’s real—and why does it have to be.” I thought, exactly!
Everyone comes back and everyone is still here.
Mother is the answer to these questions.
Stories, memories, dreams, dogs, alcohol, water, diet coke.
“My kind of Indian has to be self-defined It’s whatever I do, how I do it.”
Mother is also exemplary of grief connoting love and connection. Mother is feeling over describing the feeling. “And when I dream, I remember. And when I remember, I dream, wondering if it’s real—and why does it have to be.” I thought, exactly!
Everyone comes back and everyone is still here.
December 31, 2024
this was beautiful and raw — fiction rooted in nonfiction on the lived experiences of indigenous people.
‘mother’ explores the themes of identity and heritage as the unnamed narrator finds her way back to her birth family through their own past stories — weaving a family history from her birth family’s stories, her community’s history and imagined past and futures.
it’s a stunning piece of work, read beautifully by the author herself, and i honestly cannot wait to see what else m.s. RedCherries will do in the future!
‘mother’ explores the themes of identity and heritage as the unnamed narrator finds her way back to her birth family through their own past stories — weaving a family history from her birth family’s stories, her community’s history and imagined past and futures.
it’s a stunning piece of work, read beautifully by the author herself, and i honestly cannot wait to see what else m.s. RedCherries will do in the future!
April 7, 2025
the book made me *feel* so many things it’s nearly indescribable. as a diasporic cuban living in miami, the line that stuck with me the most was “my kind of Indian has to be self-defined. It’s whatever I do, and however I do it.” because it truly captures the internal struggle of living between two worlds, one where the Americans tell you what you are in relation to THEM, and the other of the blood in your veins pulling your towards something bigger just beyond your view, over the horizon, expansive and unknowable. I’m definitely going to need to reread this again at some point this year.
November 1, 2024
A fascinating collection exploring identity through Indigenous experience. I appreciated the honesty and examination of relationship in different facets. Not one person’s life is the same as another, but human growth is where we can find common ground. I enjoy reading human experiences in the hopes of understanding and growing.
Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Books, and author m.s. RedCherries for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. “mother” was published July 16, 2024!
Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Books, and author m.s. RedCherries for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. “mother” was published July 16, 2024!
April 18, 2025
SO FREAKING GOOD. Honestly, in the three years that I have been reading poetry, this is the best collection I have read. The narrative weaves in and out of the various forms, shifting from one perspective to the next. Under an Illuminated Same, my favorite of the group, managed to both break my heart and give me hope for the future. If this is only her debut collection, then I can’t wait to see what comes next.
February 19, 2025
3.5 🌟
A poetry / prose poetry collection about belonging: as a Native American, as a daughter, as a sister. RedCherries reflects on her upbringing away from her biological family and from the Cheyenne people. Most of her pieces are narrative in style, filled with memories and wishes for knowing more deeply from whom and what she comes.
A poetry / prose poetry collection about belonging: as a Native American, as a daughter, as a sister. RedCherries reflects on her upbringing away from her biological family and from the Cheyenne people. Most of her pieces are narrative in style, filled with memories and wishes for knowing more deeply from whom and what she comes.
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