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The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams
A searing book as powerful as the life experience that inspired it, THE BLOOD RUNS LIKE A RIVER THROUGH MY DREAMS transports readers to the majestic landscapes and hard Native American lives of the desert Southwest. Born to a storytelling Native mother and a roughneck, song-singing father, Nasdijj has always lived at the jagged-edged margins of society, yet hardship and isolation have only brought him greater clarity -- a gift for language and a voice of searching honesty. "In a prose style that could almost be chanted" (New York Magazine), Nasdijj writes of his adopted son, Tommy Nothing Fancy, and of his own chaotic childhood; of his struggles between two cultures and his pursuit of the writing life -- as a lifeline. A powerful, unforgettable memoir, THE BLOOD RUNS LIKE A RIVER THROUGH MY DREAMS will "wash over readers and often take them by surprise" (Fort Worth Star-Telegram).
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2000
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141 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
June 21, 2015
This book was pretty great until I found out it was done by a fake.
For all of the supporters out there please think. This is a man who exploited a people for profit. He may care very much for the people but it's ignorant to write a book, proclaiming to be from that culture, and make a profit from their losses. Especially fooling a generation of people and allowing people to take your "research" as an authentic first person account. That is not only unethical but socially irresponsible. Literature should be safe and minorities should be protected.
For all of the supporters out there please think. This is a man who exploited a people for profit. He may care very much for the people but it's ignorant to write a book, proclaiming to be from that culture, and make a profit from their losses. Especially fooling a generation of people and allowing people to take your "research" as an authentic first person account. That is not only unethical but socially irresponsible. Literature should be safe and minorities should be protected.
August 6, 2007
I think my problem with this book is that I now know that the author isn't what the book says the author is. I have no sympathy for the writting. And the writting is horrible...jumping around and repeating itself....and turning around in circles. If the author truly did have fetal alchol syndrome...I could understand...however...this is just bad writting.
November 18, 2017
FUCK THIS GUY!
He is a white dude posing as a Native American and writing fiction passed off as memoir. My friend and I just ripped this book to shreds when we found out we'd been duped.
He is a white dude posing as a Native American and writing fiction passed off as memoir. My friend and I just ripped this book to shreds when we found out we'd been duped.
July 30, 2007
I loved this, and then I read several articles that presented credible evidence that the author was a complete fake. Ugh.
October 1, 2007
I really, really loved this book for a long time and reccommended it to everyone I knew.. that is, of course, until Nasdijj was exposed to be a fraud. This after the James Frey and J.T. Leroy scandals.
He didn't just elaborate a little, but made up a lot, and has since been hostile to the publishing community for calling him on it. So... it's even more of a question of liking the art while not liking the artist. I mean, I dunno.
There are sequences like when the father take his son fishing and it's the last time. And the sequences of anger at the hospitals and just driving through the beautiful, neglected nothingness of the Rez... I still love it for these things. Despite being told it was all a lie...
This is what I originally said about it to friends:
Nasdijj wrote the signature piece in this collection of personal essays while homeless, living on KOA campgrounds, on a manual typewriter he carried around with him. Esquire published it, and this thoroughly passionate memoir was born. He writes with haunting lyricism of growing up on the Navajo reservation, of fetal alcohol syndrome, poverty and abuse. Most importantly, he tells us of the story of Tommy Nothing Fancy, his six-year-old adopted son, destined to die from FAS. Here is a father’s heart scarred by anger and love, compassion and commitment. Please, please read this book.
He didn't just elaborate a little, but made up a lot, and has since been hostile to the publishing community for calling him on it. So... it's even more of a question of liking the art while not liking the artist. I mean, I dunno.
There are sequences like when the father take his son fishing and it's the last time. And the sequences of anger at the hospitals and just driving through the beautiful, neglected nothingness of the Rez... I still love it for these things. Despite being told it was all a lie...
This is what I originally said about it to friends:
Nasdijj wrote the signature piece in this collection of personal essays while homeless, living on KOA campgrounds, on a manual typewriter he carried around with him. Esquire published it, and this thoroughly passionate memoir was born. He writes with haunting lyricism of growing up on the Navajo reservation, of fetal alcohol syndrome, poverty and abuse. Most importantly, he tells us of the story of Tommy Nothing Fancy, his six-year-old adopted son, destined to die from FAS. Here is a father’s heart scarred by anger and love, compassion and commitment. Please, please read this book.
November 20, 2019
In the beginning I thought I was going to love this book. I did not know about the controversy surrounding the book. There were some thought-provoking moments when the author talks about the hardships the American Indian still go through because of what the white man has done to their population and their ancestors. The author claims to be 1/2 Navajo and talks quite a bit about what it is like to live on the reservations Then I started to think the author had quite a bit of bitterness in his own heart towards the white man and some other things that seemed a bit odd. I decided I wanted to know more about the author so I did a search for the author. That's when I found out that this book being labeled a memoir is a total fraud. The author Nasdijj (another reason I googled was to see if I could find out how to pronounce this name) is a total made up name and the author's real name Timothy Patrick Barrus and he has zero Native American blood and the book is a total work of fiction, even though it is plainly labeled as memoir on the cover. This also happened around the time that James Frey sold his book as a memoir when it was almost total fiction. So I felt cheated to find out that I had read 2/3 of the book thinking it was nonfiction and then finding out it was fiction and not even written by a Native American. Reading the reviews it seems that this is a pretty common reaction.
May 30, 2023
While reading this book, I looked up the author only to come upon a sense of betrayal. The audacity of the author to appropriate a culture already dealing with its own struggles and make money through lies and deceit left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The writing is interesting, and I finished the book reluctantly, but it is not worth picking up. Better to find books written by ACTUAL Native Americans.
The writing is interesting, and I finished the book reluctantly, but it is not worth picking up. Better to find books written by ACTUAL Native Americans.
November 11, 2021
This is writing in its most pure form. Full, real emotions were in each word and the results are a truly poetic piece of literature.
February 10, 2017
I want to help make this book a bestseller. Nasdijj's words changed my perspective on the world and on my role in the world, in my hometown and in my home. Perhaps the current political climate in the U.S. is a factor in my reflections on this memoir as I often thought of those being displaced by the DAPL. I am sitting here just looking at the cover as I attempt to write this review and find myself revisiting various essays in my mind. Perhaps I should wait a few days until I can organize my thoughts... it is just that kind of book. I doubt I will ever have the words to share this experience. I am thankful he did.
November 29, 2024
Had this book been authentic, I would have given if 5 stars without question.
In fact, I am going to include my original review below.
PLEASE NOTE: this author was NOT who he claimed to be. The entire novel was a farce.
From a TIME Magazine article: Nasdijj the Not-So-Real Navajo”:
“Growing up in Lansing, Michigan and later becoming the author of gay leather porn and sadomasochistic novels didn't get Timothy Barrus the kind of exposure he desired, so he made up a persona of a Navajo man whose son died of fetal alcohol syndrome and Bam! He became a star — or rather, Nasdijj, his fake alter-ego, became a star.
“Barrus' essay, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams," ran in the June 1999 issue of Esquire, became a National Magazine Award finalist that year and garnered enough attention to get Houghton Mifflin to make it a book. Barrus went on to publish two more award-winning memoirs, but it wasn't until about seven years later that LA Weekly produced an investigative piece blowing the whistle on Barrus' shady operation. He eventually fessed up, complaining that no one ever took notice of his previous book proposals until he created the downtrodden, destitute Nasdijj.
“He told Esquire in 2006: "I never really thought River would ever be printed, much less cause the commotion it did." Still, Barrus' life and personal history does bear some similarity to his character: he claims that at 18 he found an abandoned Chippewa baby and took care of it for three months; his wife, Tina, will not travel anywhere without their dog named Navajo, even going as far as wearing dark sunglasses to pretend Navajo is her seeing-eye dog (her vision is fine). After all that deception, Barrus became as impoverished as the bogus character he so vividly described.”
Here is what I initially wrote before finding this out:
Nasdijj’s “The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams” is brilliant, gritty, and realistically depressing. It has the same bludgeoning effect as reading Charles Bukowski, without feeling that visceral hatred for the perpetually deplorable narrator.
Nasdiij has a command of language and an unprecedented knack for metaphors. This book reads as a memoir and a book of short stories, all in one. It is not for the faint of heart, but for lovers of life’s scathing realities.
Here are some of my favorite phrases and sentences:
Referring to a city as containing nothing more than “watering holes of gin and sin” (p. 4).
“I avoid people wherever I can, which is never enough” (p. 6).
On his mixed emotions for the woman who bore his son, plaguing him with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:
“How many knife blades have plunged into her solitary heart only to find their way into her belly where all her reversals and her hollow aching live. She does not dance on the wind with mad wings but is blown into her dreams of savage incapacity” (p. 13).
On the surrounding landscape: “...light spills down the canyon’s walls and howls at the moving vanity of the river” (p. 17).
“My son comes back to me in radiance on nights the wind sings treacherous awakenings and the moon seems but a paralytic rock suspended in a regal sky of blackened teeth” (p. 20).
On an abusive, chaotic childhood:
“It was a life tossed about the waves, tossed about malcontented confrontation, tossed about a desert of wishes, tossed and tangled with the branches and the roots of other thrown-together lives… You lived between the waves, or at least you learned to gulp for breath between the rages sent your way by an angry god with his workboots and his whiskey. It was a life of being beaten again and again, the bite of a belt buckle slashing against the flesh of your naked back as you stood there and took it, bending now, bleeding wherever the buckle flays the flesh and skin. Me never really knowing why, because knowing why never made it any better” (pgs. 30-31).
“I can tell you what it was, but I cannot tell you why it was… No explanation by an adults was ever offered. Kids were not important” (p. 33).
“I can recall being beaten, but I do not care to write about it. Putting it into words won’t change any of it. What was, was. Survival was something you accomplished even in the midst of family” (p. 35).
Thoughts on white culture as an Indigenous person of mixed race:
“What Bobby doesn’t understand is that white culture isn’t a culture at all. It’s an unculture, and as such it isn’t in any danger of disappearing. There’s nothing there to disappear. Go poof. White culture is ephemeral. It is intolerant” (p. 50).
On white collar work:
“Offices are very dangerous cages indeed” (p. 52).
“As a Mental Health Poster Child, I keep a loaded .45 hand-gun under my pillow in the bed of my pickup, Old Big Wanda” (p. 63).
On the groups surrounding him:
“The pure, the virtuous, and the blissfully deranged. The dying and the demented” (p. 71).
On witnessing a suburban school:
“It was a normal school for normal kids run by adults who cranked out normalcy as if it were a chain-link fence factory, and here we were cranking it out and cranking it out, all the fine little links, miles and miles of normalcy dividing and protecting us from deviance of every kind” (p. 120).
On the European treatment of Acoma Indians:
“Cutting off the feet of the Acoma Indians is only one of the cruelties that were perpetuated against them. The women were raped. Pregnant women were disemboweled. Young men were publicly castrated. Old people and children were put in cages and fed to vicious dogs. Babies had their brains bashed in with rocks. Medicine men were burned at the stake. The ‘discoverers’ of New Mexico conducted a systematic campaign of terror against the people they ‘discovered’” (p. 148).
In fact, I am going to include my original review below.
PLEASE NOTE: this author was NOT who he claimed to be. The entire novel was a farce.
From a TIME Magazine article: Nasdijj the Not-So-Real Navajo”:
“Growing up in Lansing, Michigan and later becoming the author of gay leather porn and sadomasochistic novels didn't get Timothy Barrus the kind of exposure he desired, so he made up a persona of a Navajo man whose son died of fetal alcohol syndrome and Bam! He became a star — or rather, Nasdijj, his fake alter-ego, became a star.
“Barrus' essay, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams," ran in the June 1999 issue of Esquire, became a National Magazine Award finalist that year and garnered enough attention to get Houghton Mifflin to make it a book. Barrus went on to publish two more award-winning memoirs, but it wasn't until about seven years later that LA Weekly produced an investigative piece blowing the whistle on Barrus' shady operation. He eventually fessed up, complaining that no one ever took notice of his previous book proposals until he created the downtrodden, destitute Nasdijj.
“He told Esquire in 2006: "I never really thought River would ever be printed, much less cause the commotion it did." Still, Barrus' life and personal history does bear some similarity to his character: he claims that at 18 he found an abandoned Chippewa baby and took care of it for three months; his wife, Tina, will not travel anywhere without their dog named Navajo, even going as far as wearing dark sunglasses to pretend Navajo is her seeing-eye dog (her vision is fine). After all that deception, Barrus became as impoverished as the bogus character he so vividly described.”
Here is what I initially wrote before finding this out:
Nasdijj’s “The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams” is brilliant, gritty, and realistically depressing. It has the same bludgeoning effect as reading Charles Bukowski, without feeling that visceral hatred for the perpetually deplorable narrator.
Nasdiij has a command of language and an unprecedented knack for metaphors. This book reads as a memoir and a book of short stories, all in one. It is not for the faint of heart, but for lovers of life’s scathing realities.
Here are some of my favorite phrases and sentences:
Referring to a city as containing nothing more than “watering holes of gin and sin” (p. 4).
“I avoid people wherever I can, which is never enough” (p. 6).
On his mixed emotions for the woman who bore his son, plaguing him with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:
“How many knife blades have plunged into her solitary heart only to find their way into her belly where all her reversals and her hollow aching live. She does not dance on the wind with mad wings but is blown into her dreams of savage incapacity” (p. 13).
On the surrounding landscape: “...light spills down the canyon’s walls and howls at the moving vanity of the river” (p. 17).
“My son comes back to me in radiance on nights the wind sings treacherous awakenings and the moon seems but a paralytic rock suspended in a regal sky of blackened teeth” (p. 20).
On an abusive, chaotic childhood:
“It was a life tossed about the waves, tossed about malcontented confrontation, tossed about a desert of wishes, tossed and tangled with the branches and the roots of other thrown-together lives… You lived between the waves, or at least you learned to gulp for breath between the rages sent your way by an angry god with his workboots and his whiskey. It was a life of being beaten again and again, the bite of a belt buckle slashing against the flesh of your naked back as you stood there and took it, bending now, bleeding wherever the buckle flays the flesh and skin. Me never really knowing why, because knowing why never made it any better” (pgs. 30-31).
“I can tell you what it was, but I cannot tell you why it was… No explanation by an adults was ever offered. Kids were not important” (p. 33).
“I can recall being beaten, but I do not care to write about it. Putting it into words won’t change any of it. What was, was. Survival was something you accomplished even in the midst of family” (p. 35).
Thoughts on white culture as an Indigenous person of mixed race:
“What Bobby doesn’t understand is that white culture isn’t a culture at all. It’s an unculture, and as such it isn’t in any danger of disappearing. There’s nothing there to disappear. Go poof. White culture is ephemeral. It is intolerant” (p. 50).
On white collar work:
“Offices are very dangerous cages indeed” (p. 52).
“As a Mental Health Poster Child, I keep a loaded .45 hand-gun under my pillow in the bed of my pickup, Old Big Wanda” (p. 63).
On the groups surrounding him:
“The pure, the virtuous, and the blissfully deranged. The dying and the demented” (p. 71).
On witnessing a suburban school:
“It was a normal school for normal kids run by adults who cranked out normalcy as if it were a chain-link fence factory, and here we were cranking it out and cranking it out, all the fine little links, miles and miles of normalcy dividing and protecting us from deviance of every kind” (p. 120).
On the European treatment of Acoma Indians:
“Cutting off the feet of the Acoma Indians is only one of the cruelties that were perpetuated against them. The women were raped. Pregnant women were disemboweled. Young men were publicly castrated. Old people and children were put in cages and fed to vicious dogs. Babies had their brains bashed in with rocks. Medicine men were burned at the stake. The ‘discoverers’ of New Mexico conducted a systematic campaign of terror against the people they ‘discovered’” (p. 148).
March 1, 2022
Do yourself a favor. Go into the book knowing nothing.
February 25, 2021
The language and the stories reel and careen between vivid beauty, vivid horror, and the double yellow lines of mundane pavement, like a wilderness highway connecting a string of places you never imagined were "anywhere."
I can sense why allegations of inauthenticity have trailed behind this author, and yet it all seems so very clear; his cards are all face up on the table all the time.
My favorite story is the vengeance tale of stealing Onate's foot. It works precisely because it is dressed up as an inspirational caper story, not necessarily anything more, and busy so doing it carries more truth than a documentary history.
I can sense why allegations of inauthenticity have trailed behind this author, and yet it all seems so very clear; his cards are all face up on the table all the time.
My favorite story is the vengeance tale of stealing Onate's foot. It works precisely because it is dressed up as an inspirational caper story, not necessarily anything more, and busy so doing it carries more truth than a documentary history.
May 1, 2023
A powerful memoir. The author writes of his growing up as half Navajo, half white, at the fringe of the society, of the short time he spent with his adopted son, of life on reservations, of homelessness.
Due to his lack of formal education, reading and writing did not come easy to Nasdijj, but he is determined to write, to write about his personal and ancestral history, to give voice to those who are never heard. His language is beautiful and lyric. It's not an easy read but I feel grateful that I read this book.
Due to his lack of formal education, reading and writing did not come easy to Nasdijj, but he is determined to write, to write about his personal and ancestral history, to give voice to those who are never heard. His language is beautiful and lyric. It's not an easy read but I feel grateful that I read this book.
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August 30, 2025I won't rate this book, because the man was a fraud. How do you 'rate' a 'memoir' that seemed great at the time, but turned out to have been completely fabricated? I had to read this book in college in 2005, and I liked it at the time, but "Nasdijj" later turned out to actually be a straight married man named Tim Barrus who wrote gay fetish erotica & was not Native at all. He co-opted a Native American identity for his own profit, and everyone who reads any of his work deserves to know.
October 5, 2024
I ate this book up - and then I looked up the author. Throughout the book, they constantly bring up 'the white man' and the destructive and irredeemable qualities of the white man's exploitation. Turns out THE AUTHOR is 'the white man' writing this book. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt but the actions it took to write this book are unforgivable and in one word - disgusting.
May 20, 2017
This deeply moving, heart-wrenching memoir is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read. Truth, grace, compassion and hard-earned existential wisdom on every page.
November 27, 2017
After learning more about this author, I could not finish this book. There is nothing worse than someone purpetrating a fraud and stealing culture under the guise of a memoir.
http://www.laweekly.com/news/navahoax...
http://www.laweekly.com/news/navahoax...
December 9, 2023
JUST DISGUSTED.
July 21, 2024
I cannot give this book a 1/5 due to deception because the writing it too good. I cannot give it a 5/5 because of the deception.
May 29, 2025
was halfway thru this and learned the man who wrote this admitted that he made the whole thing up. wtf. i wish i could give this no stars at all. colonizer behavior.
May 18, 2012
Honestly I started reading this because it's only 200 or so pages and I'm behind on my goal of 50 books read this year. I figured I'd knock it out in a day or 2 at most. Famous last words.
On the first day about a quarter of the way through, after reading the beginning of what appeared to be the bleakest biography ever, I learned from reviews on this site that it was later discovered this "biography" was really a "work of fiction", to put it nicely. "Fraudulent" is probably a better term to describe the book.
That said, I tried to be objective going forward and would judge the book as a work of fiction and for how well it was wrtitten. After all how many of us are really honest about the story of our lives and who we are? Are any of us as good or as bad as we think we are? Can we accurately and elegantly document our own histories?
However, I couldnt help but feel betrayed/lied to somehow and so I was more fascinated by the actual true story of an author trying to perpetrate a fraud on the publishing industry and the public. So about halfway through the book I looked up the author, Nasdijj, online and found an Esquire article about this false biography. Embellishing details about one's life is one thing but after being detoured into reading the story of the actual author, Tim Barrus (aka "Nasdijj"), I realized this book is just an outright lie. Or as the LA Weekly coined the book, a "Nava-hoax".
The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams purports to be the life story of Nasdijj, the mixed-race son of a white "cowboy" father (who abused him in every possible way) and a Navajo mother (who, after being pimped out and abused by his father, turns to alcohol, resulting in Nasdijj being born with "mild" Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) The adult Nasdijj adopts the acutely FAS-stricken son of his Navajo "wife" who cant stop drinking to excess and cheating on Nasdijj to give her son, Tommy Nothing Special, a chance to not be born afflicted. Nasdijj is also something of an outcast amongst the Navajo he lives with due to his caucasian features and is a struggling writer who'd rather starve, live in his truck and be homeless rather than give up writing his stories about the transgressions against the Native American. He doesnt care that none of his stories get picked up and that his FAS prevents him from stringing coherent thoughts together and from being able to adhere to the rules of grammar and/or linear storyline structure. In short, his writing is raw and all over the place but poignant just the same.
In reality, Tim Barrus is a white, 50-something, itinerant, failed essay writer who submits this book to Esquire magazine passing himself off as Nasdijj, Native American writer. He plays on their "guilt" to get published by pointing out they've never featured a Native author and his story is indicative of the suffering many Native Americans experience. Less-than-cursory fact-checking ensues and voila! The next big thing in Native American authors is born (coincidentally I hear that Sherman Alexie had something to do with exposing Barrus but found no evidence of this) In reality Barrus and his wife did have a special needs child but unlike "noble" Nasdijj who perservered through all of his son's illness until his death in Nasdijj's arms, Barrus and his wife gave up their child to the state after his care got to be too much. Barrus takes odd jobs to make ends meet and appears to see being an author as one of those jobs. While he is entirely unsuccessful in his conventional essay writing he apparently makes a living writing porn. (Esquire seems to make a point of indicating its gay porn as if that's somehow worse than being a prolific straight porn author. I think saying he's writing porn pretty much gets across the point that he's not exactly living the dream as an author. You'd think they'd know better)
Anyway, I havent read that far yet but apparently Nasdijj adopts a troubled teen who everyone else is just about to give up on (wait... how does a homeless guy get to adopt some random kid?) and the kid dies of AIDS (?) On the one hand I'm a little offended this book is a big fat lie but I'm thankful that no one really suffered this much.
In closing, Nasdijj uses the term "Urban Indian" to describe the people who, like himself, are poor and live in the Tenderloin in San Francisco--To draw parallels between them and the plight of the Native American. I know some of those people; Urban Indian is not the term I think of when I think of a descriptive term for some of them. I remember the "movement" to make that term a reality and I'm so glad it failed miserably. Isnt the world PC enough? I was perplexed as to why a Native American would include these people, many of whom revel in self-imposed degradation and immorality, as "brethren/kindred spirits" and now, knowing that Nasdijj doesnt really exist, it makes more sense. Only someone who wasnt an Indian would be so liberal with defining who can be one.
On the first day about a quarter of the way through, after reading the beginning of what appeared to be the bleakest biography ever, I learned from reviews on this site that it was later discovered this "biography" was really a "work of fiction", to put it nicely. "Fraudulent" is probably a better term to describe the book.
That said, I tried to be objective going forward and would judge the book as a work of fiction and for how well it was wrtitten. After all how many of us are really honest about the story of our lives and who we are? Are any of us as good or as bad as we think we are? Can we accurately and elegantly document our own histories?
However, I couldnt help but feel betrayed/lied to somehow and so I was more fascinated by the actual true story of an author trying to perpetrate a fraud on the publishing industry and the public. So about halfway through the book I looked up the author, Nasdijj, online and found an Esquire article about this false biography. Embellishing details about one's life is one thing but after being detoured into reading the story of the actual author, Tim Barrus (aka "Nasdijj"), I realized this book is just an outright lie. Or as the LA Weekly coined the book, a "Nava-hoax".
The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams purports to be the life story of Nasdijj, the mixed-race son of a white "cowboy" father (who abused him in every possible way) and a Navajo mother (who, after being pimped out and abused by his father, turns to alcohol, resulting in Nasdijj being born with "mild" Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) The adult Nasdijj adopts the acutely FAS-stricken son of his Navajo "wife" who cant stop drinking to excess and cheating on Nasdijj to give her son, Tommy Nothing Special, a chance to not be born afflicted. Nasdijj is also something of an outcast amongst the Navajo he lives with due to his caucasian features and is a struggling writer who'd rather starve, live in his truck and be homeless rather than give up writing his stories about the transgressions against the Native American. He doesnt care that none of his stories get picked up and that his FAS prevents him from stringing coherent thoughts together and from being able to adhere to the rules of grammar and/or linear storyline structure. In short, his writing is raw and all over the place but poignant just the same.
In reality, Tim Barrus is a white, 50-something, itinerant, failed essay writer who submits this book to Esquire magazine passing himself off as Nasdijj, Native American writer. He plays on their "guilt" to get published by pointing out they've never featured a Native author and his story is indicative of the suffering many Native Americans experience. Less-than-cursory fact-checking ensues and voila! The next big thing in Native American authors is born (coincidentally I hear that Sherman Alexie had something to do with exposing Barrus but found no evidence of this) In reality Barrus and his wife did have a special needs child but unlike "noble" Nasdijj who perservered through all of his son's illness until his death in Nasdijj's arms, Barrus and his wife gave up their child to the state after his care got to be too much. Barrus takes odd jobs to make ends meet and appears to see being an author as one of those jobs. While he is entirely unsuccessful in his conventional essay writing he apparently makes a living writing porn. (Esquire seems to make a point of indicating its gay porn as if that's somehow worse than being a prolific straight porn author. I think saying he's writing porn pretty much gets across the point that he's not exactly living the dream as an author. You'd think they'd know better)
Anyway, I havent read that far yet but apparently Nasdijj adopts a troubled teen who everyone else is just about to give up on (wait... how does a homeless guy get to adopt some random kid?) and the kid dies of AIDS (?) On the one hand I'm a little offended this book is a big fat lie but I'm thankful that no one really suffered this much.
In closing, Nasdijj uses the term "Urban Indian" to describe the people who, like himself, are poor and live in the Tenderloin in San Francisco--To draw parallels between them and the plight of the Native American. I know some of those people; Urban Indian is not the term I think of when I think of a descriptive term for some of them. I remember the "movement" to make that term a reality and I'm so glad it failed miserably. Isnt the world PC enough? I was perplexed as to why a Native American would include these people, many of whom revel in self-imposed degradation and immorality, as "brethren/kindred spirits" and now, knowing that Nasdijj doesnt really exist, it makes more sense. Only someone who wasnt an Indian would be so liberal with defining who can be one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2018
It is never easy to lose a loved one. This memoir describes the pain a heart feels when someone's dying, every moment that passes, is a moment that brings the death closer. Written in a Sioux style, this memoir also describes the serenity of mother nature with great exuberance. It creates a beautiful imagery of the landscapes.. mesmerizing.
May 28, 2012
My review for this book will be short. Why you may ask? Well to be frank it was not that great of a book in my opinion so I feel no need to rant and rave over it. Also, after having finished, what I thought was an ok book…not great, but ok…I found out that it is said to be a work of fiction instead of a real memoir. The author wrote it and sold it as a memoir, but after some readers did some deeper looking at it after reading it, they actually came to find it a work of falsehood. I am counting this as a memoir read for me, as this is what I fully thought it to be…until after reading it. Therefore the review I feel comfortable writing is on the writing itself and NOT the story, so a bit of a different angle for my review than usual. The writing, I would classify as, ok. Again, not the best, but not the worst I have read. It was a bit hard to follow at times…a lot of the time for me. It was shifted from present, past with his child, past with his family, and past as in his childhood. Now this would have been ok, had it not all been shifted to all these parts in one chapter and sometimes even one page. I felt like I was talking to a great aunt I had in my family when I was younger. What do I mean by that? Well, she would start a conversation talking about one thing and then, without even ending that sentence sometimes, would all the sudden start talking about something else entirely different. That is how this book was for me. Some of the chapters gave me mental whiplash! Why did I continue reading? The concept of the book and the author (who I thought was real at the time of reading) was intriguing to me and I thought it would get better. I think that is all I have for you on this book front though.
2/5 Stars!
2/5 Stars!
June 15, 2023
This book was beautiful in a deeply bone chilling way. Some of my favorite chapters were My Son Comes Back to Me, Tenderloin, On Being Homeless, Michif's Tape, and Go Fish. The chapter, Michif's Tape, was especially compelling given my close relationship to a junior high teacher.
Here are some stunning lines from Go Fish:
His was the deep silence that does not endeavor to explain itself in words. His was the deep silence of the lake, where the light slants down from a sun of lambent red. His were the singing secrets of the lake where fat crabs come ashore to feed at night like clusters of blackbirds that move swiftly in the darkness back into the canyons of the lake. His eyes were the eyes of some unmerciful god imprisoned in his, uninhabitable head where the edges of his dreams speak in torrents of tongues. He hovers like a shadow floating on water.
His eyes were the silence of the caves hidden high in the mountains all around us.
His was the cold of the snow-fed lake and the burning heat of the summer afternoon.
His fingers were the horses that ran away over the hills into trees.
His were the singing secrets of the lake where light slants down and the only sound the blackbirds make is the rushing of wings. His was the silence of the lake and the absence of his pain. His was the silence of the lake and the kicks up clouds that will bring us rain.
Here are some stunning lines from Go Fish:
His was the deep silence that does not endeavor to explain itself in words. His was the deep silence of the lake, where the light slants down from a sun of lambent red. His were the singing secrets of the lake where fat crabs come ashore to feed at night like clusters of blackbirds that move swiftly in the darkness back into the canyons of the lake. His eyes were the eyes of some unmerciful god imprisoned in his, uninhabitable head where the edges of his dreams speak in torrents of tongues. He hovers like a shadow floating on water.
His eyes were the silence of the caves hidden high in the mountains all around us.
His was the cold of the snow-fed lake and the burning heat of the summer afternoon.
His fingers were the horses that ran away over the hills into trees.
His were the singing secrets of the lake where light slants down and the only sound the blackbirds make is the rushing of wings. His was the silence of the lake and the absence of his pain. His was the silence of the lake and the kicks up clouds that will bring us rain.
November 9, 2012
Another memoir recommended by my English teacher. The more I read memoirs, the more I like how closely the themes are woven throughout, although this one did seem to hold together a little more arbitrarily. In particular, I appreciated the scattered references to wild horses, fishing with Tommy Nothing Fancy, the descriptions of being homeless and his earning a little bit of money to go buy dolls for the Texan girls, writing as his lifeline, the traditions and suffering of the Navajo, the angst and misplacement of being a teenager but watching his friend fly (SO MUCH SYMBOLISM OMG), and the ending redemption of helping the second troubled boy.
However, then I went online and read about the controversy surrounding it and I don't know what to think. As it turns out, Nasdijj is a pseudonym, and he's not half Navajo, he's all white. I don't know what is true. Normally, I wouldn't care; it's a book, but I read that the Navajo are angry about the cultural appropriation--taking the sufferings of very real tribes and very real multicultural literature and almost shamming it with his lies.
From a social perspective, it's tremendously unethical.
However, then I went online and read about the controversy surrounding it and I don't know what to think. As it turns out, Nasdijj is a pseudonym, and he's not half Navajo, he's all white. I don't know what is true. Normally, I wouldn't care; it's a book, but I read that the Navajo are angry about the cultural appropriation--taking the sufferings of very real tribes and very real multicultural literature and almost shamming it with his lies.
From a social perspective, it's tremendously unethical.
June 17, 2016
It's taken forever to get through this. The writing is a very mixed quality. Sometimes it drags sometimes it soars. He claims to have fetal alcohol syndrome which for me excused the bad writing but now that I know it's a fake memoir I guess that's just an excuse.
Because apparently he's a white guy from Michigan and in no way a Native. He just exploited their culture and history to make a profit for himself. So that's gross. The whole thing is just a lie. I have written a lot of one star reviews and donated a lot of books to Goodwill when I was done with them. This is the first book I actually threw in the trash when I was done.
Because apparently he's a white guy from Michigan and in no way a Native. He just exploited their culture and history to make a profit for himself. So that's gross. The whole thing is just a lie. I have written a lot of one star reviews and donated a lot of books to Goodwill when I was done with them. This is the first book I actually threw in the trash when I was done.
June 9, 2010
A startling book. I was drawn deep and utterly into the sad story. The writing so beautiful and the characters so tragic and compelling. I don't usually love a sad, sad story but this one won me over completely. And then I found out, a few months after reading the book, that it was a hoax. The book had been published as a memoir. In fact, it was a story, fictional, fabricated. Very weird, but it didn't change my feelings about the writing or the story. I just wonder why the author didn't put it out as fiction....
September 8, 2007
gorgeously written. the author, unfortunately is his own "talented mr. ripley" and pretends to be half navajo. a slap in the face to anyone who has grown up indigenous. kinda like that nazi bum, forrest carter. anyway, the prose is searing, lyrical...absolutely wonderful to read, if you can get over the bodysnatcher aspect.
February 16, 2009
A father grieving his son died so young and then he adopts a son, a teenager and returns him from the wild to school in one of the last chapters of the book. He sees the potential, teaches him to read through McDonnells french fries and learns he is a better storyteller, from the diary he keeps than the author which is going some. Poetic, drags a bit int he middle and then "pow"
July 15, 2009
Sure, the memoir turned out to be more a work of fiction, but the emotions evoked are still real. I give the author kudos for his creative endeavor, but admonish him for his duplicity--i mean he paraded around AS Nasdijj. But I don't think I'll follow up with the other 2 works published as Nasdijj-by most accounts, "The Blood Runs..." is the strongest of lot.
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