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Quiet Until the Thaw
From bestselling memoirist Alexandra Fuller, a debut novel.
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger towards the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.
Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys, orphaned at birth, in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys within their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be, and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.
A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected. As Fuller writes, "The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly."
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger towards the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.
Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys, orphaned at birth, in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys within their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be, and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.
A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected. As Fuller writes, "The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly."
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 27, 2017
175 people are currently reading
2342 people want to read
About the author
Alexandra Fuller
16 books1,132 followersAlexandra Fuller has written five books of non-fiction.
Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant was published in May, 2008 by Penguin Press and was a Toronto Globe and Mail, Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness was published in August 2011 (Penguin Press).
Her latest book, Leaving Before the Rains Come, was published in January 2015 (Penguin Press).
Fuller has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers including the New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Vogue and Granta Magazine. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review; The Financial Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Fuller was born in England in 1969 and moved to Africa with her family when she was two. She married an American river guide in Zambia in 1993. They left Africa in 1994 and moved to Wyoming, where Fuller still resides. She has three children.
Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant was published in May, 2008 by Penguin Press and was a Toronto Globe and Mail, Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness was published in August 2011 (Penguin Press).
Her latest book, Leaving Before the Rains Come, was published in January 2015 (Penguin Press).
Fuller has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers including the New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Vogue and Granta Magazine. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review; The Financial Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Fuller was born in England in 1969 and moved to Africa with her family when she was two. She married an American river guide in Zambia in 1993. They left Africa in 1994 and moved to Wyoming, where Fuller still resides. She has three children.
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May 12, 2017
As an enrolled member of the Tohono O'odham nation (the tribe that is called Pima and Maricopa in this book) and a former resident of one of the Eight Northern Pueblos, I went into this book prepared to be very critical. I'm extremely uncomfortable about the idea of a white woman writing about the experiences of Native people, especially when said white woman grew up in colonial Africa. I am against the idea that any white person should write from the point of view of a Native person. They will always get it wrong. It's offensive to think that white writers can write about a group of people that have faced years of cultural oppression and genocide by white people. It's offensive that a white person would try to write about that kind of horror, and the strength a cultural group needs to survive it. Along those lines I am very wary of non-Native people who claim to feel an affinity with Native culture, and who claim to gain a spiritual acceptance of this culture. Sherman Alexie touches on this very well in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian when a white man crashes the funeral of Junior's grandmother. ("I'm not Indian, but I FEEL Indian in my bones," this white man intones, dressed head to toe in "authentic" Native garb.) In an introductory letter that was included in my advanced reader's copy, Alexandra Fuller writes "The Rez and the people who live there made sense to me on a blood and bone level", so before the novel even begins she is falling into a cliched defense and justification of why she is qualified to write this story. Well, she may feel Indian in her bones, but being Indian means more than just feeling some connection. "To be back among the lively dead of the Lakota . . . was to find myself shocked into a completely unexpected homecoming, if home is where your soul can settle in recognition," she goes on to write. As a Native woman I am offended and grieved that a white woman, who has lived as an oppressor of people of color, is now laying claim to the ancestors of Native people. I am also worried that I see so many reviews of this book where a non-Native reviewer seems to think that Fuller's experiences growing up in Africa gives her a special insight into cultures that are not hers. I would think her upbringing as a privileged white girl in a country where her servants were all African natives would make her less qualified to write a book about the Oglala Lakota Sioux, not more qualified.
I really wanted to get an ARC of this book because I know Fuller's books are usually very popular and gain a lot of media attention. Quiet Until the Thaw could be very widely read, especially since so many people have read and loved Fuller's memoirs and other non-fiction work. When I heard that Fuller's first novel would be about the experiences of two Lakota men I was concerned that non-Native people would read it and come away from it thinking they understood Native people and their culture, based on this short novel written by a white woman. Netgalley and Penguin Press approved a digital ARC for me, and I sat down to read this book, trying to keep an open mind. Since I have never read any of Fuller's other work, I had nothing to compare her writing to, and the first surprise to me was that her writing was excellent. It's spare, yet elegant, and has some dry humor. If she had written a novel about the lives of two white men, I would probably have loved this book. If she had written about observing Native people from the point of view of a white character I would have scoffed, but I would have accepted a story about a white person's observations of a group she hasn't been born to, and hasn't grown up in.
Instead, Fuller chose to write about growing up Oglala Lakota, from the point of view of Oglala Lakota people. I think this why she falls so easily into the traps of creating characters that are very typically "Indian". They have "Indian" names. They are sent to "boarding school". They live in "tar paper lean-tos". They refer to "the rez" ad nauseum. They put up with being called names like "Diesel Engine" by the white characters. Fuller often uses the collective "we" when writing about "Indian thought". She constantly refers to "White Man" throughout this book as if she is desperate to distance her own white heritage from that of the perceived evilness of this horrifying, oppressive "White Man". The "Indian-ness" of this book is screaming at the top of its lungs that it's about the INDIAN EXPERIENCE. And it's not. It's about a white woman's perspective of the Indian experience. From a white woman's perspective, Indian people have names like You Choose What Son. From a white woman's perspective the main characters extended family are referred to en mass as "Extended Relations" and even when referred to individually, have no names. From a white woman's perspective Indian culture is irrevocably broken by their trials and tribulations. There are many, many instances in this novel when the hardships of Native people are written about in an almost reverent manner. Alexandra Fuller seems to take a romantic view of the attempted genocide and assimilation of our country's Indigenous people, and this is not fun to read about, since only a person who has never faced the consequences of genocide and assimilation would write about it in these terms. There is very much a tone of "Ah, the poor Indians who used to roam free. How sad and broken they are now that they have lost everything." (I will include quotes to back this up as soon as I am able to procure a finished copy; I don't want to quote something that may not appear in the final edition.)
Fuller also ends up writing about a white person's usual stereotypes of Native people, although I'm sure this was not her intention. The two main characters of this book are You Choose Watson (who later becomes You Choose What Son) and Rick Overlooking Horse. From the time Rick is introduced as a character you know he is a cliche of a white person's idea of a Native person. He is quiet "even for an Indian" and inscrutable. As he grows older he becomes the wise, medicine man who lives alone, and raises horses. He is clearly the "sacred Indian", the "stoic Indian", the Indian who knows the rhythms of the earth, and is resigned to the suffering of his people. By contrast, You Choose ingests three bags of sugar to get out of military service and lives off the land in a commune where he avoids all hard work (the "lazy Indian" or the "irresponsible Indian"). He later develops a drinking problem (the "drunk Indian") and becomes a corrupt leader of the Lakota people (the "sneaky Indian"). It's perhaps unfair of me to fault Alexandra Fuller for falling into the trap of writing such stereotypes, especially since aspects of You Choose's character is clearly based on the real-life Dick Wilson, former chairperson of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people. Writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, and Louise Erdrich have written Native characters that also drink and sneak and cheat, and I don't fault them for it. But I don't appreciate Fuller's appropriation of these characteristics of the Indian people she writes because she is not Indian. No matter how much time she spends with them, no matter how much she feels part of their inner circle, no matter what affinity she feels for Native people, she simply does not, and will never, understand what it is to grow up Native, and to live with your Native-ness every day. Therefore, I don't think it's OK for her to write about such cliched Indians, or for her to write about Indians at all. Leave Native people to write Native characters, drunk and sneaky as they may be. In this novel Alexandra Fuller takes it on herself to explain "the rez" and the Native lifestyle which (again) I believe should be left to Native writers.
As the book wears on Fuller's white guilt glimmers through several scenes, and her ignorance of Native sovereignty comes across when a character urges another character to call tribal cops instead of "the troopers" since she wants to keep the crime among the Indians. (State troopers have no jurisdiction on Indian reservations, so Indian people don't call them to report crime; they call tribal police. Only tribal police and federal agents can investigate crimes committed on Native land.) At the end of the book her narrative pokes fun at Indians succumbing to their own stereotypes, although the entire novel perpetuates Native stereotypes. She does what she probably thought was the "correct" thing to do when writing about young Indian men cutting off their hair. But it's the very end of the book where her misunderstanding, and ultimately disrespect, of Indigenous people comes through. In her narrative of Indian people I guess Alexandra Fuller believes that all Indians will sell out their heritage and culture to the white man for his entertainment, then return to their reservation as chastened failures, ready to carry on another generation of living Indian. Ultimately white people are just fine with the beauty and mystery of Indian people, who are so brave and noble in the face of all their suffering, as long as they stay on their reservations, and work on being as brave and noble as white people want them to be. As long as Indians can stay in their place, practicing their sacred traditions for white people to feel a connection to in their bones, then white people can be happy with them. But heaven forbid they venture out to the wider world where they will never learn that the White Man will constantly be looking to exploit them. Better to stay on the rez where non-Indians can pity their poverty and marvel at their innate understanding of the Great Spirit. It's interesting that Alexandra Fuller wrote stereotypical Indians, who fall into a stereotypical life of exploitation, and return to where they belong. I wonder if these characters will someday run into a white writer who claims their lifestyle makes sense to her "on a blood and bone level." I wonder how they will feel when this writer publishes a novel that claims to speak for them.
The sad thing is, non-Native people will think this book is great. When Native people point out its flaws we will be chided for being too sensitive.
I really wanted to get an ARC of this book because I know Fuller's books are usually very popular and gain a lot of media attention. Quiet Until the Thaw could be very widely read, especially since so many people have read and loved Fuller's memoirs and other non-fiction work. When I heard that Fuller's first novel would be about the experiences of two Lakota men I was concerned that non-Native people would read it and come away from it thinking they understood Native people and their culture, based on this short novel written by a white woman. Netgalley and Penguin Press approved a digital ARC for me, and I sat down to read this book, trying to keep an open mind. Since I have never read any of Fuller's other work, I had nothing to compare her writing to, and the first surprise to me was that her writing was excellent. It's spare, yet elegant, and has some dry humor. If she had written a novel about the lives of two white men, I would probably have loved this book. If she had written about observing Native people from the point of view of a white character I would have scoffed, but I would have accepted a story about a white person's observations of a group she hasn't been born to, and hasn't grown up in.
Instead, Fuller chose to write about growing up Oglala Lakota, from the point of view of Oglala Lakota people. I think this why she falls so easily into the traps of creating characters that are very typically "Indian". They have "Indian" names. They are sent to "boarding school". They live in "tar paper lean-tos". They refer to "the rez" ad nauseum. They put up with being called names like "Diesel Engine" by the white characters. Fuller often uses the collective "we" when writing about "Indian thought". She constantly refers to "White Man" throughout this book as if she is desperate to distance her own white heritage from that of the perceived evilness of this horrifying, oppressive "White Man". The "Indian-ness" of this book is screaming at the top of its lungs that it's about the INDIAN EXPERIENCE. And it's not. It's about a white woman's perspective of the Indian experience. From a white woman's perspective, Indian people have names like You Choose What Son. From a white woman's perspective the main characters extended family are referred to en mass as "Extended Relations" and even when referred to individually, have no names. From a white woman's perspective Indian culture is irrevocably broken by their trials and tribulations. There are many, many instances in this novel when the hardships of Native people are written about in an almost reverent manner. Alexandra Fuller seems to take a romantic view of the attempted genocide and assimilation of our country's Indigenous people, and this is not fun to read about, since only a person who has never faced the consequences of genocide and assimilation would write about it in these terms. There is very much a tone of "Ah, the poor Indians who used to roam free. How sad and broken they are now that they have lost everything." (I will include quotes to back this up as soon as I am able to procure a finished copy; I don't want to quote something that may not appear in the final edition.)
Fuller also ends up writing about a white person's usual stereotypes of Native people, although I'm sure this was not her intention. The two main characters of this book are You Choose Watson (who later becomes You Choose What Son) and Rick Overlooking Horse. From the time Rick is introduced as a character you know he is a cliche of a white person's idea of a Native person. He is quiet "even for an Indian" and inscrutable. As he grows older he becomes the wise, medicine man who lives alone, and raises horses. He is clearly the "sacred Indian", the "stoic Indian", the Indian who knows the rhythms of the earth, and is resigned to the suffering of his people. By contrast, You Choose ingests three bags of sugar to get out of military service and lives off the land in a commune where he avoids all hard work (the "lazy Indian" or the "irresponsible Indian"). He later develops a drinking problem (the "drunk Indian") and becomes a corrupt leader of the Lakota people (the "sneaky Indian"). It's perhaps unfair of me to fault Alexandra Fuller for falling into the trap of writing such stereotypes, especially since aspects of You Choose's character is clearly based on the real-life Dick Wilson, former chairperson of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people. Writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, and Louise Erdrich have written Native characters that also drink and sneak and cheat, and I don't fault them for it. But I don't appreciate Fuller's appropriation of these characteristics of the Indian people she writes because she is not Indian. No matter how much time she spends with them, no matter how much she feels part of their inner circle, no matter what affinity she feels for Native people, she simply does not, and will never, understand what it is to grow up Native, and to live with your Native-ness every day. Therefore, I don't think it's OK for her to write about such cliched Indians, or for her to write about Indians at all. Leave Native people to write Native characters, drunk and sneaky as they may be. In this novel Alexandra Fuller takes it on herself to explain "the rez" and the Native lifestyle which (again) I believe should be left to Native writers.
As the book wears on Fuller's white guilt glimmers through several scenes, and her ignorance of Native sovereignty comes across when a character urges another character to call tribal cops instead of "the troopers" since she wants to keep the crime among the Indians. (State troopers have no jurisdiction on Indian reservations, so Indian people don't call them to report crime; they call tribal police. Only tribal police and federal agents can investigate crimes committed on Native land.) At the end of the book her narrative pokes fun at Indians succumbing to their own stereotypes, although the entire novel perpetuates Native stereotypes. She does what she probably thought was the "correct" thing to do when writing about young Indian men cutting off their hair. But it's the very end of the book where her misunderstanding, and ultimately disrespect, of Indigenous people comes through. In her narrative of Indian people I guess Alexandra Fuller believes that all Indians will sell out their heritage and culture to the white man for his entertainment, then return to their reservation as chastened failures, ready to carry on another generation of living Indian. Ultimately white people are just fine with the beauty and mystery of Indian people, who are so brave and noble in the face of all their suffering, as long as they stay on their reservations, and work on being as brave and noble as white people want them to be. As long as Indians can stay in their place, practicing their sacred traditions for white people to feel a connection to in their bones, then white people can be happy with them. But heaven forbid they venture out to the wider world where they will never learn that the White Man will constantly be looking to exploit them. Better to stay on the rez where non-Indians can pity their poverty and marvel at their innate understanding of the Great Spirit. It's interesting that Alexandra Fuller wrote stereotypical Indians, who fall into a stereotypical life of exploitation, and return to where they belong. I wonder if these characters will someday run into a white writer who claims their lifestyle makes sense to her "on a blood and bone level." I wonder how they will feel when this writer publishes a novel that claims to speak for them.
The sad thing is, non-Native people will think this book is great. When Native people point out its flaws we will be chided for being too sensitive.
April 23, 2017
3+ stars
What first drew me to this book was the beautiful title. I didn't know until I received an advanced copy of it that it was a name from a Swampy Cree poem. One of the characters Rick Overlooking Horse doesn't talk very much so he is compared to the woman in the poem. The names and their meanings and the reasons why people are named as they are is just one of the things that fascinated me in learning some of the culture of the Lakotas that is reflected in the story.
I was hoping to love this book more than I did, but from the beginning it felt a bit disjointed. I don't usually have any problems with a narrative moving back and forth in time and from character to character, but here I felt that there was something about the narrative structure that kept the characters at a distance . There are definitely interesting and profound things about the culture and history the Lakotas that I learned and was moved by.
Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, raised on the Lakota Oglala Sioux Reservation in South Dakota by their Grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse so differently facing their futures. The book touches on the experiences of young Native Americans in boarding schools, in the military, in prison but reflecting the most on the life on the Rez . The culture, customs and beliefs, the history and present story that of this Native American tribe was definitely enlightening. There are several 4 and 5 star reviews on Goodreads that I would recommend that perhaps do more justice to this book that I could. I think it is an important story to tell even though I was unable to fully connect with the narrative. The author spent three months in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and her connection with this people is evident in her first work of fiction.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Press through NetGalley and Edelweiss.
What first drew me to this book was the beautiful title. I didn't know until I received an advanced copy of it that it was a name from a Swampy Cree poem. One of the characters Rick Overlooking Horse doesn't talk very much so he is compared to the woman in the poem. The names and their meanings and the reasons why people are named as they are is just one of the things that fascinated me in learning some of the culture of the Lakotas that is reflected in the story.
I was hoping to love this book more than I did, but from the beginning it felt a bit disjointed. I don't usually have any problems with a narrative moving back and forth in time and from character to character, but here I felt that there was something about the narrative structure that kept the characters at a distance . There are definitely interesting and profound things about the culture and history the Lakotas that I learned and was moved by.
Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, raised on the Lakota Oglala Sioux Reservation in South Dakota by their Grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse so differently facing their futures. The book touches on the experiences of young Native Americans in boarding schools, in the military, in prison but reflecting the most on the life on the Rez . The culture, customs and beliefs, the history and present story that of this Native American tribe was definitely enlightening. There are several 4 and 5 star reviews on Goodreads that I would recommend that perhaps do more justice to this book that I could. I think it is an important story to tell even though I was unable to fully connect with the narrative. The author spent three months in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and her connection with this people is evident in her first work of fiction.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Press through NetGalley and Edelweiss.
August 2, 2017
4★
“Rick Overlooking Horse said this time of night was for old people and children, the keepers of the wisdom. People in the middle of their years were busier, often doing unwise things, he said. They needed their sleep.”
So where do YOU fit into the scheme of things? Old or young and thoughtful? Or busy and unwise and tired? This is an unusual debut novel from a published author of non-fiction. Fuller, born in England and raised in southern Africa, has channelled her ‘inner Lakota’ to write the story of two Indian boys raised by Mina, who’s been wet-nursing foster babies for many years. [The word Indian is used throughout.]
It’s a quirky story, with tales of the Rez (reservation) injustice, poverty, myth, tradition and plenty of humour, some of it pretty dark. I think much of it applies to many peoples of the world, and not necessarily just First Nations. Some religions and belief systems see the Big Picture in similar ways.
First, some fun:
About her name, Le-a (NOT “Leah”) shouts:
And she hollered and yelled her name, the correct pronunciation of it, 'You can’t read? What’s wrong with you? The dash ain’t silent. It’s Ladasha, you asshole. Ladasha!'"
A couple of their gangs, the CIA and FBI: “Colonized Indian Asses, they called each other. CIA, for short . . .FBIs, they called themselves. Full-blood Indians.”
When a car broke down:
“Rezercise, they called it, when your car bottomed out and you had to walk.”
When a guy who claims to be part Seminole Indian comes to a protest.
“But the Indians called him the Small Nosebleed Indian, because they said a mild hemorrhage from a single nostril was all it would take to get rid of every last drop of his native blood.”
The characters:
The boys are very different and a real handful, but Mina’s tough, and she’s done this for so long, she’s worked out a chart.
“The year she got the boys, Mina Overlooking Horse drew two round bundles with wide-open mouths that represented the boys, and a bigger stick figure with a straight-across mouth that represented her. She wrote the number 216, and underneath it, the number 12 . Then she drew a line under that, and wrote 204. Every Winter Count after that, the stick figures of the children grew taller and thinner, and the stick figure that represented her grew shorter and fatter. And every year, Mina Overlooking Horse subtracted another 12 months from her sentence as reluctant caretaker.”
Rick Overlooking Horse grows up to be an activist while You Choose Watson (later You Choose What Son, because he like the sound of it), as Mina put it, “was born half Cowboy, half Indian, and—as Mina liked to say afterward—the missing half of each.”
Rick goes off by himself to live a more traditional life on the land but travels to join protests for Indian land rights, while You Choose becomes a drunk politician (among other things), and is pretty much the waste of space that Mina predicted.
Back to the philosophical bits.
In her foreword, Fuller describes some Lakota attitudes which she found similar to what she had learned in southern Africa (and which wouldn’t be out of place in describing many cultures or belief systems). Time is circular and comes around again and again, even as one person’s time runs out.
She mentions that Christians in the 1950s tried to explain things, treating time as linear, putting one foot in front of the other, “accounting for all the time between birth and death, but accounting for none of the time between death and birth.”
Between death and birth. Whether you’re thinking of reincarnation or living now 'among' your ancient ancestors (who are sometimes considered to be stars or in the stars), there are other belief systems (religions) that allow for a more circular idea of time.
How the world works. Mina explained to the boys:
“Like that breath you just took. In the beginning, a dinosaur breathed that breath. Then a tree. Then an ant. Then you, now me. And maybe it’ll be You Choose next. Or maybe that breath will sink to the bottom of the ocean for one of those blind, ugly fish. Or maybe it will be someone’s dying breath. You see? They say you just borrowed that breath. It wasn’t yours to begin with and it won’t be yours to end with.”
Kinship – skinship. The author says “it takes being born Indian to understand the intricacies of kinship. Skinship, the youth say.”
The Aborigines of Australia have complicated kinship groups and skin names, for much the same reason, and they probably aren’t the only ones outside of the Lakota.
I found this an interesting and entertaining book to read. While I take some of the uniqueness of the Lakota with a grain of salt, I appreciate their problem and that they represent similar problems with so many people stuck in this position – basically those who’ve been unwillingly colonised. They’ve lost their battles, they’ve been confined to ever diminishing reserved areas, and they’re expected to forego their identity to become just another cog in the machinery of the industrialised world.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted (so some quotes may have changed).
“Rick Overlooking Horse said this time of night was for old people and children, the keepers of the wisdom. People in the middle of their years were busier, often doing unwise things, he said. They needed their sleep.”
So where do YOU fit into the scheme of things? Old or young and thoughtful? Or busy and unwise and tired? This is an unusual debut novel from a published author of non-fiction. Fuller, born in England and raised in southern Africa, has channelled her ‘inner Lakota’ to write the story of two Indian boys raised by Mina, who’s been wet-nursing foster babies for many years. [The word Indian is used throughout.]
It’s a quirky story, with tales of the Rez (reservation) injustice, poverty, myth, tradition and plenty of humour, some of it pretty dark. I think much of it applies to many peoples of the world, and not necessarily just First Nations. Some religions and belief systems see the Big Picture in similar ways.
First, some fun:
About her name, Le-a (NOT “Leah”) shouts:
And she hollered and yelled her name, the correct pronunciation of it, 'You can’t read? What’s wrong with you? The dash ain’t silent. It’s Ladasha, you asshole. Ladasha!'"
A couple of their gangs, the CIA and FBI: “Colonized Indian Asses, they called each other. CIA, for short . . .FBIs, they called themselves. Full-blood Indians.”
When a car broke down:
“Rezercise, they called it, when your car bottomed out and you had to walk.”
When a guy who claims to be part Seminole Indian comes to a protest.
“But the Indians called him the Small Nosebleed Indian, because they said a mild hemorrhage from a single nostril was all it would take to get rid of every last drop of his native blood.”
The characters:
The boys are very different and a real handful, but Mina’s tough, and she’s done this for so long, she’s worked out a chart.
“The year she got the boys, Mina Overlooking Horse drew two round bundles with wide-open mouths that represented the boys, and a bigger stick figure with a straight-across mouth that represented her. She wrote the number 216, and underneath it, the number 12 . Then she drew a line under that, and wrote 204. Every Winter Count after that, the stick figures of the children grew taller and thinner, and the stick figure that represented her grew shorter and fatter. And every year, Mina Overlooking Horse subtracted another 12 months from her sentence as reluctant caretaker.”
Rick Overlooking Horse grows up to be an activist while You Choose Watson (later You Choose What Son, because he like the sound of it), as Mina put it, “was born half Cowboy, half Indian, and—as Mina liked to say afterward—the missing half of each.”
Rick goes off by himself to live a more traditional life on the land but travels to join protests for Indian land rights, while You Choose becomes a drunk politician (among other things), and is pretty much the waste of space that Mina predicted.
Back to the philosophical bits.
In her foreword, Fuller describes some Lakota attitudes which she found similar to what she had learned in southern Africa (and which wouldn’t be out of place in describing many cultures or belief systems). Time is circular and comes around again and again, even as one person’s time runs out.
She mentions that Christians in the 1950s tried to explain things, treating time as linear, putting one foot in front of the other, “accounting for all the time between birth and death, but accounting for none of the time between death and birth.”
Between death and birth. Whether you’re thinking of reincarnation or living now 'among' your ancient ancestors (who are sometimes considered to be stars or in the stars), there are other belief systems (religions) that allow for a more circular idea of time.
How the world works. Mina explained to the boys:
“Like that breath you just took. In the beginning, a dinosaur breathed that breath. Then a tree. Then an ant. Then you, now me. And maybe it’ll be You Choose next. Or maybe that breath will sink to the bottom of the ocean for one of those blind, ugly fish. Or maybe it will be someone’s dying breath. You see? They say you just borrowed that breath. It wasn’t yours to begin with and it won’t be yours to end with.”
Kinship – skinship. The author says “it takes being born Indian to understand the intricacies of kinship. Skinship, the youth say.”
The Aborigines of Australia have complicated kinship groups and skin names, for much the same reason, and they probably aren’t the only ones outside of the Lakota.
I found this an interesting and entertaining book to read. While I take some of the uniqueness of the Lakota with a grain of salt, I appreciate their problem and that they represent similar problems with so many people stuck in this position – basically those who’ve been unwillingly colonised. They’ve lost their battles, they’ve been confined to ever diminishing reserved areas, and they’re expected to forego their identity to become just another cog in the machinery of the industrialised world.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted (so some quotes may have changed).
May 4, 2017
Alexandra Fuller's first novel, Quiet Until the Thaw, is many things at once in its style and substance, but what left a lingering impression is its way of easily introducing the reader to the culture, beliefs, and history of the Lakota Oglala, while also itself being a sort of fable, filled with smaller narratives all connected into a larger whole. It's written in short, staccato paragraphs and chapters, told from the perspective of a sort of Sioux chorus, dipping in and out of the specific narrative of Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson/What Son to weave with the larger past, present, and future of the Lakota people, very much in line with their beliefs about the unbreakable connectivity of family, ancestors, time. And unlike other modern fables and allegories, this one is rooted in real life just as for the Lakota, "everyone is born knowing this: we cannot be unless we first belong. Soil is flesh in waiting; flesh is soil in waiting." The characters are specific people we come to know and root for or against or both, but also extend into symbols, one man or woman standing for the history and destiny of an entire community. The choppiness took a bit of getting used to, but overall I was moved and enlightened by this novel. I enjoyed the writing too, which took on a hypnotic quality by the end and utterly absorbed me, and Fuller's novel also inspired to seek out more fiction and nonfiction focusing on the Native American experience. It's a not a perfect read, but I found it powerful and would round down from 4.5 to 4 stars and recommend it with some caveats.
It's good and bad, and it says a lot if you, and most of the people you know, are prepared at any moment to leave where you are, with nothing more than what you might be able to carry, and to never look back. It says a lot if loss is something you're born knowing how to do; and something you've honed with years of practice. You can't have dark without light. You can't know wisdom without suffering. You can't insist on a life. A life insists on you. The Lakota know this: Let go of everything that was not meant for you.
The Lakota do not believe anything comes from nothing: when time is circular and infinite, all things and outcomes are connected. So too, Fuller's main characters, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson/What Son, come into focus through their people's history. The two orphan boys are brought up together in 1950s and 60s America on the reservation (referred to as the Rez throughout). Both are quickly educated in the ways of the world and possible lots in life for a young American Indian boy, but their shared past diverges as You Choose dodges the draft and moves into an itinerant life, drifting from place to place and searching for a place in the world for him, while Rick goes to war in Vietnam, returns and settles in his native land and builds a life and livelihood via traditional ways and practices. The two estranged "brothers" cross paths across their histories and the history of the Lakota, through protests and economic hardships, to changing access and cultural mores, and the alienation and rage of You Choose and the acceptance and peace of Rick are placed not quite in opposition to each other, but as poles on a continuum, and all of Fuller's characters slide across this space as circumstance and need require them. But you're never too fully immersed in the specific tale of these brothers and rivals to not also see the larger cultural and political history of the Lakota in broad strokes and intimate details.
The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly. Not only our own pasts, of course, but also the pasts of our ancestors. And the pasts of people we've never even heard of, and to whom we are not related to us at all. The energies of their great passions hang in the air forever, and posses a forever half-life, and all of that is awash in the universe.
The chapters are on the shorter side, and somewhat choppy. It took me a bit to get into Fuller's rhythm, until I stopped treating it as a straight forward narrative and started looking at it the way you might a collection of tales that are both individual and part of a larger whole. Fuller narrates from a first person omniscient perspective more or less, speaking through the voice of a sort of Oglala Lakota Sioux chorus, and in this way the more general beliefs and historical occurrences and grief and loss and pain can be discussed beyond the simple narrative. And because the voice is threaded throughout, it's able to fairly seamlessly tell one story while simultaneously telling many, to present the particular developments in the life of Rick and You Choose while nodding to the varying currents through time that have blown both men into the positions they are in, from the Battle of the Greasy Grass (aka Custer's Last Stand) to Billy Mills' Olympic triumph. This aids the reader enormously when covering Rick's (and You Choose's) involvement in the Second Siege of Wounded Knee in 1973: able to show our protagonist's specific actions, while also clarifying and illuminating in a general way the driving hunger and loss and force behind the social movements. The writing itself is mostly the best sort of spare prose: simple words connected for maximum insight and spiritual connection, nothing fancy or romantic or flowery, but Fuller excels at laying bare historical facts and revealing the heart of a man or woman. Her Sioux chorus also addresses the reader as "All My Relations": we too, from outside looking in on these lives and the Lakota, we are invited to participate, to understand as part of the family and tribe, to meditate on our shared connectivity and humanity.
"They can say what they like about what happened to Indians in my land. They can rewrite history, and erase our stories. But what my mind hasn't been allowed to know, my body has always known," Thunder Hawk said. "I am an undeniable, inconvenient body of knowledge. Read me."
And then Thunder Hawk Brings Plenty stood in silence for fifteen minutes in front of her live audience.
Of course, fifteen minutes is not long enough to know the whole undeniable, inconvenient history of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, or even the whole undeniable, inconvenient history of a single Lakota-born woman. But it is long enough for people to begin to know discomfort, and that's a start.
One thing that is hard to ignore is the hot question of cultural appropriation. In a time where the diversity of fiction is questioned on a number of levels, not least about who has the right and authority to speak for the minority or disenfranchised voice, Fuller's novel dives headfirst into that public debate. I think many people, including Fuller herself, that a bestselling memoirist who happens to be white is better positioned to sell a novel of the Lakota than a Lakota native is, for a variety of facts and constructs. But if the purpose of fiction is to entertain and to inform, and present us with an opportunity for empathy, Fuller's Quiet Until the Thaw achieves that in spades, a subtle yet powerful reminder of the historical treatment of Native Americans, but invoking such empathy in a people and culture so easily misunderstood and reduced to caricature or stereotype. It's an opening to greater knowledge and understanding, and from Fuller's full and dignified and enthusiastic and unapologetic embrace of her characters' triumphs and hardships and grace and flaws, I assume she too will not simply stop her education having written this novel. I do believe true understanding and progress can only happen with engagement, and one hopes that a variety of voices from across cultures can be part of the conversation. It's a complex issue and it's easy to understand the strong emotions and ideas on all sides of the debate.
Not everyone chooses to be liberated by liberating messages. Some people choose to be terrorized by them. And in this, you can only be what you are.
Overall, Quiet Until the Thaw is a unique read: quiet and powerful, focused on specific characters but explicitly and intricately tied to the larger Lakota experience and history, achieving almost a voice and tone from a myth and with the coiling of smaller anecdotes into the larger whole it has the feel of a fable, but from the depth of its research and the punch of its truth and history, it is far more important and memorable than other modern novel-fable-myth hybrids. The writing style may not be for everyone, and Fuller as author will provoke at least some interesting thoughts if not some thoughtful to vitriolic discussion as another datapoint in the debate on cultural appropriation and who can and should speak for whom. But ultimately if the subject matter interests you, I would urge you to read this very different novel for yourself, and hopefully use it as a jumping off point to seek more, read more, deepen understanding as I hope to.
-received an ARC on edelweiss, thanks to Penguin Random House
It's good and bad, and it says a lot if you, and most of the people you know, are prepared at any moment to leave where you are, with nothing more than what you might be able to carry, and to never look back. It says a lot if loss is something you're born knowing how to do; and something you've honed with years of practice. You can't have dark without light. You can't know wisdom without suffering. You can't insist on a life. A life insists on you. The Lakota know this: Let go of everything that was not meant for you.
The Lakota do not believe anything comes from nothing: when time is circular and infinite, all things and outcomes are connected. So too, Fuller's main characters, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson/What Son, come into focus through their people's history. The two orphan boys are brought up together in 1950s and 60s America on the reservation (referred to as the Rez throughout). Both are quickly educated in the ways of the world and possible lots in life for a young American Indian boy, but their shared past diverges as You Choose dodges the draft and moves into an itinerant life, drifting from place to place and searching for a place in the world for him, while Rick goes to war in Vietnam, returns and settles in his native land and builds a life and livelihood via traditional ways and practices. The two estranged "brothers" cross paths across their histories and the history of the Lakota, through protests and economic hardships, to changing access and cultural mores, and the alienation and rage of You Choose and the acceptance and peace of Rick are placed not quite in opposition to each other, but as poles on a continuum, and all of Fuller's characters slide across this space as circumstance and need require them. But you're never too fully immersed in the specific tale of these brothers and rivals to not also see the larger cultural and political history of the Lakota in broad strokes and intimate details.
The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly. Not only our own pasts, of course, but also the pasts of our ancestors. And the pasts of people we've never even heard of, and to whom we are not related to us at all. The energies of their great passions hang in the air forever, and posses a forever half-life, and all of that is awash in the universe.
The chapters are on the shorter side, and somewhat choppy. It took me a bit to get into Fuller's rhythm, until I stopped treating it as a straight forward narrative and started looking at it the way you might a collection of tales that are both individual and part of a larger whole. Fuller narrates from a first person omniscient perspective more or less, speaking through the voice of a sort of Oglala Lakota Sioux chorus, and in this way the more general beliefs and historical occurrences and grief and loss and pain can be discussed beyond the simple narrative. And because the voice is threaded throughout, it's able to fairly seamlessly tell one story while simultaneously telling many, to present the particular developments in the life of Rick and You Choose while nodding to the varying currents through time that have blown both men into the positions they are in, from the Battle of the Greasy Grass (aka Custer's Last Stand) to Billy Mills' Olympic triumph. This aids the reader enormously when covering Rick's (and You Choose's) involvement in the Second Siege of Wounded Knee in 1973: able to show our protagonist's specific actions, while also clarifying and illuminating in a general way the driving hunger and loss and force behind the social movements. The writing itself is mostly the best sort of spare prose: simple words connected for maximum insight and spiritual connection, nothing fancy or romantic or flowery, but Fuller excels at laying bare historical facts and revealing the heart of a man or woman. Her Sioux chorus also addresses the reader as "All My Relations": we too, from outside looking in on these lives and the Lakota, we are invited to participate, to understand as part of the family and tribe, to meditate on our shared connectivity and humanity.
"They can say what they like about what happened to Indians in my land. They can rewrite history, and erase our stories. But what my mind hasn't been allowed to know, my body has always known," Thunder Hawk said. "I am an undeniable, inconvenient body of knowledge. Read me."
And then Thunder Hawk Brings Plenty stood in silence for fifteen minutes in front of her live audience.
Of course, fifteen minutes is not long enough to know the whole undeniable, inconvenient history of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, or even the whole undeniable, inconvenient history of a single Lakota-born woman. But it is long enough for people to begin to know discomfort, and that's a start.
One thing that is hard to ignore is the hot question of cultural appropriation. In a time where the diversity of fiction is questioned on a number of levels, not least about who has the right and authority to speak for the minority or disenfranchised voice, Fuller's novel dives headfirst into that public debate. I think many people, including Fuller herself, that a bestselling memoirist who happens to be white is better positioned to sell a novel of the Lakota than a Lakota native is, for a variety of facts and constructs. But if the purpose of fiction is to entertain and to inform, and present us with an opportunity for empathy, Fuller's Quiet Until the Thaw achieves that in spades, a subtle yet powerful reminder of the historical treatment of Native Americans, but invoking such empathy in a people and culture so easily misunderstood and reduced to caricature or stereotype. It's an opening to greater knowledge and understanding, and from Fuller's full and dignified and enthusiastic and unapologetic embrace of her characters' triumphs and hardships and grace and flaws, I assume she too will not simply stop her education having written this novel. I do believe true understanding and progress can only happen with engagement, and one hopes that a variety of voices from across cultures can be part of the conversation. It's a complex issue and it's easy to understand the strong emotions and ideas on all sides of the debate.
Not everyone chooses to be liberated by liberating messages. Some people choose to be terrorized by them. And in this, you can only be what you are.
Overall, Quiet Until the Thaw is a unique read: quiet and powerful, focused on specific characters but explicitly and intricately tied to the larger Lakota experience and history, achieving almost a voice and tone from a myth and with the coiling of smaller anecdotes into the larger whole it has the feel of a fable, but from the depth of its research and the punch of its truth and history, it is far more important and memorable than other modern novel-fable-myth hybrids. The writing style may not be for everyone, and Fuller as author will provoke at least some interesting thoughts if not some thoughtful to vitriolic discussion as another datapoint in the debate on cultural appropriation and who can and should speak for whom. But ultimately if the subject matter interests you, I would urge you to read this very different novel for yourself, and hopefully use it as a jumping off point to seek more, read more, deepen understanding as I hope to.
-received an ARC on edelweiss, thanks to Penguin Random House
February 6, 2017
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota
A provocative story of an ancient tribe, an honorable history, an uncertain future, and the people who carry their voices forward.
Grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse raised the two cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson who were born within a few weeks of each other and were left with her to raise. She had to make sense about their choices to be born at the particular time in history to their particular parents. Their paths will turn out very differently, while their family bond will forever define them as branches from the same tree.
You Choose Watson's father was Elijah Watson.
"Cowboy, who went under the name of Elijah Watson, but he wasn't much of that. All hat and no cattle, as they say."
In this way, You Choose Watson was born half Cowboy, half Indian, and--as Mina liked to say afterward--the missing half of each. Which is to say the boy was born with an itinerant Cowboy as a father and a sore-hearted Indian girl as a mother." February, 1944.
Mina Overlooking Horse bore Thompson White Feather three sons, which she named:
Nodody Overlooking Horse;
Anybody Overlooking Horse;
Somebody Overlooking Horse.
By giving them these names she was hoping that misfortune would pass them by since there was no power in any of the names.
Alas, it did not work quite that way. Nobody died of pneumonia, Anybody died of a disease he contracted during his stint as an airman in New Guinea.
Only Somebody survived. He pursued death in everything he did and was left with broken ribs, smashed molars, a pulverized ear, a broken nose, a broken jaw, and crushed testicles manifested to Somebody as little more than a dull annoyance, a slight hindrance. Mina said: "It's hard to tell why he doesn't just shoot hisself and be done with it."... And a lot of anger!
-----
Rick Overlooking Horse, son of Nobody Overlooking Horse, made an honest living on the Rez. He served in the military, was a kind of unrecognized hero, and disabled after being serious wounded. He aint' taking money from the White government, won't use their diseased money either. Rick only wants peace. Right out there on his own, away from all the other residents.
But his cousin, You Choose Watson, had other plans when he returned back to the Rez. As early as their fourth year on this earth as young boys, then living with their grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse, You Choose Watson shot Rick Overlooking Horse in his leg with a bow and arrow. Rick did not cry. And You Choose did not apologize. It was just the way it was.
His grandmother, Mina, told You Choose that his anger was his own doing, like his birth: "You could have been born when you had the chance to hunt buffalo, and live the way of All Our Ancestors. Yeah, and don't look at me like that, little Tapeworm. You ain't my doing, You're your doing."
Rick Overlooking Horse had his own ideas on choices:
However, many years later, when You Choose thought he could get away with his shenanigans again, he suddenly had to deal with Le-a Brings Plenty. It would be worse than incarceration and hell combined.
-----
Le-a Brings Plenty, had her Great fertility Crisis, which Squanto had to address. Especially in winter, when there were not many job opportunities in the Rez. Her babies were calling her from the other side, she could hear them.
But Le-a had to figure out her own lineage, ever since her mother Thunder Hawk went over to Israel and came back pregnant. There was no story to tell, apart from her speech to an audience at an event to honor local leaders of indigenous groups around the world.
COMMENT
In this illuminating novel, Alexandra Fuller contributes historical and social insight into the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota, with a strong voice in a gripping narrative. Her prose is picturesque, rich in texture and color; endearing, and honest. The story line moves from one main character to other, with back flashes into their history and the people who played a role in their character formation.
The Overlooking Horse family, and the ties that bind them to their heritage, traditions, language, and customs are so alive and vibrant in this gripping tragicomedy.
In her memoirs of her life in Africa, Alexander Fuller used the same style to report the hardship and happiness of her own family. The laughter most often comes with tears in the eyes. It's just her way with words.
Quiet Until The Thaw is certainly not meant to be funny at all, but the author lightens a dark, somber narrative up with wit and humor, keeping the reader bonded to the otherwise tragic tale.
It's a beautiful story! Alexandra Fuller is a new voice in the novel world. She is telling the stories that would otherwise be forgotten. She gives the little people a space to sing their songs to their own rhythms and she does it splendidly.
I want to thank Netgalley, Penguin Press and Alexander Fuller for the opportunity to review this debut novel which is scheduled for publication in June 2017.
A great read. RECOMMENDED.
A provocative story of an ancient tribe, an honorable history, an uncertain future, and the people who carry their voices forward.
Grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse raised the two cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson who were born within a few weeks of each other and were left with her to raise. She had to make sense about their choices to be born at the particular time in history to their particular parents. Their paths will turn out very differently, while their family bond will forever define them as branches from the same tree.
You Choose Watson's father was Elijah Watson.
"Cowboy, who went under the name of Elijah Watson, but he wasn't much of that. All hat and no cattle, as they say."
In this way, You Choose Watson was born half Cowboy, half Indian, and--as Mina liked to say afterward--the missing half of each. Which is to say the boy was born with an itinerant Cowboy as a father and a sore-hearted Indian girl as a mother." February, 1944.
Mina Overlooking Horse bore Thompson White Feather three sons, which she named:
Nodody Overlooking Horse;
Anybody Overlooking Horse;
Somebody Overlooking Horse.
By giving them these names she was hoping that misfortune would pass them by since there was no power in any of the names.
Alas, it did not work quite that way. Nobody died of pneumonia, Anybody died of a disease he contracted during his stint as an airman in New Guinea.
Only Somebody survived. He pursued death in everything he did and was left with broken ribs, smashed molars, a pulverized ear, a broken nose, a broken jaw, and crushed testicles manifested to Somebody as little more than a dull annoyance, a slight hindrance. Mina said: "It's hard to tell why he doesn't just shoot hisself and be done with it."... And a lot of anger!
-----
Rick Overlooking Horse, son of Nobody Overlooking Horse, made an honest living on the Rez. He served in the military, was a kind of unrecognized hero, and disabled after being serious wounded. He aint' taking money from the White government, won't use their diseased money either. Rick only wants peace. Right out there on his own, away from all the other residents.
But his cousin, You Choose Watson, had other plans when he returned back to the Rez. As early as their fourth year on this earth as young boys, then living with their grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse, You Choose Watson shot Rick Overlooking Horse in his leg with a bow and arrow. Rick did not cry. And You Choose did not apologize. It was just the way it was.
His grandmother, Mina, told You Choose that his anger was his own doing, like his birth: "You could have been born when you had the chance to hunt buffalo, and live the way of All Our Ancestors. Yeah, and don't look at me like that, little Tapeworm. You ain't my doing, You're your doing."
Rick Overlooking Horse had his own ideas on choices:
Although to be fair to the choosers, Rick Overlooking Horse figured, perhaps almost all choices are mostly illusion given that almost all people seemed to be in a prison of their own making:You Choose Watson knew his way around town. Like in 1962 when he was drafted for military service, which did not go down well with him. What did go down splendidly, was the three pound bags of sugar he consumed before his interview. It was sheer genius, honestly. With double vision, two days of dizziness and light-headedness, mild sweats and nausea, You Choose hiccuped and burped himself out of the draft. "Diabetes" - were written in his rejection letter. Unfit for military service in Asia. Once again, he got away.
Mina Overlooking Horse in a prison of resentment;
You Choose Watson in a prison of need;
some of the More Concerned Immediate Relations in a prison of fear, despair, and/or anger.
And for certain almost all people are in a prison of someone else’s making. The way Rick Overlooking Horse saw it, one go-around, for example, a person might be a Oglala Lakota Oyate with the whole, high plains of buffalo to hunt. Next go-around, he’s a Red Nigger orphan stuck with corn- meal, commodity cheese and beans, and Mina Overlooking Horse for a caretaker. Was that your choice, really?
However, many years later, when You Choose thought he could get away with his shenanigans again, he suddenly had to deal with Le-a Brings Plenty. It would be worse than incarceration and hell combined.
-----
Le-a Brings Plenty, had her Great fertility Crisis, which Squanto had to address. Especially in winter, when there were not many job opportunities in the Rez. Her babies were calling her from the other side, she could hear them.
But Le-a had to figure out her own lineage, ever since her mother Thunder Hawk went over to Israel and came back pregnant. There was no story to tell, apart from her speech to an audience at an event to honor local leaders of indigenous groups around the world.
I am Thunder Hawk Brings Plenty from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I wish I did not know what I know,” she said. “I wish my people were on their land, and that I did not need to be here.”Mysteriously, without Squanto's help, Le-a herself delivered twin boys whom she named Daniel and Jerusalem. Le-a herself was not willing to explain how it happened. Perhaps she might not even know herself.
There was a rustle through the audience.
“They can say what they like about what happened to Indians in my land. They can rewrite history, and erase our stories. But what my mind hasn’t been allowed to know, my body has always known,” Thunder Hawk said. “I am an undeniable, inconvenient body of knowledge. Read me.”
And then Thunder Hawk Brings Plenty stood in silence for fifteen minutes in front of her live audience.
COMMENT
In this illuminating novel, Alexandra Fuller contributes historical and social insight into the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota, with a strong voice in a gripping narrative. Her prose is picturesque, rich in texture and color; endearing, and honest. The story line moves from one main character to other, with back flashes into their history and the people who played a role in their character formation.
The Overlooking Horse family, and the ties that bind them to their heritage, traditions, language, and customs are so alive and vibrant in this gripping tragicomedy.
In her memoirs of her life in Africa, Alexander Fuller used the same style to report the hardship and happiness of her own family. The laughter most often comes with tears in the eyes. It's just her way with words.
Quiet Until The Thaw is certainly not meant to be funny at all, but the author lightens a dark, somber narrative up with wit and humor, keeping the reader bonded to the otherwise tragic tale.
It's a beautiful story! Alexandra Fuller is a new voice in the novel world. She is telling the stories that would otherwise be forgotten. She gives the little people a space to sing their songs to their own rhythms and she does it splendidly.
I want to thank Netgalley, Penguin Press and Alexander Fuller for the opportunity to review this debut novel which is scheduled for publication in June 2017.
A great read. RECOMMENDED.
November 4, 2022
I loved the short, punchy chapters. This book has a distinct voice and a thoughtful but funny story. There’s tragedy and victory and everything in between.
July 4, 2017
I am definitely NOT enjoying this........ I hope to finish it soon. The sooner the better. The best thing about it is that it is very short.
******************
I was extremely disappointed with this book. I have absolutely adored all of the author's autobiographical works set in Africa. Her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is also biographical but is not autobiographical and does not reach up to the quality of those books where she speaks of her own family and close friends.
There is no depth to the characters; one cannot feel empathy for characters one does not know.
The writing is disjointed, repetitive, confusing and difficult to follow, with jumps in both time and place. The writing irritated me immensely.
Too large a time span is covered - from the 1940s to the beginning of the 21st century. We are meant to see how Native Americans have been used by white Americans in WW2, in Korea, in Vietnam and in Iraq. The book delivers a message rather than an engaging story.
The sweeping statements / judgments of Native American people and culture by an author who is herself not of this culture leave me with an easy feeling. I question if Fuller has properly captured their lifestyle and their beliefs in a nuanced fashion. What is delivered feels superficial.
The audiobook is narrated by Alma Cuervo. The narration isn't hard to follow, but it fails to capture the proper feeling of the events related. The telling is stiff and distanced. I have given the narration two stars; it is OK.
******************
I was extremely disappointed with this book. I have absolutely adored all of the author's autobiographical works set in Africa. Her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is also biographical but is not autobiographical and does not reach up to the quality of those books where she speaks of her own family and close friends.
There is no depth to the characters; one cannot feel empathy for characters one does not know.
The writing is disjointed, repetitive, confusing and difficult to follow, with jumps in both time and place. The writing irritated me immensely.
Too large a time span is covered - from the 1940s to the beginning of the 21st century. We are meant to see how Native Americans have been used by white Americans in WW2, in Korea, in Vietnam and in Iraq. The book delivers a message rather than an engaging story.
The sweeping statements / judgments of Native American people and culture by an author who is herself not of this culture leave me with an easy feeling. I question if Fuller has properly captured their lifestyle and their beliefs in a nuanced fashion. What is delivered feels superficial.
The audiobook is narrated by Alma Cuervo. The narration isn't hard to follow, but it fails to capture the proper feeling of the events related. The telling is stiff and distanced. I have given the narration two stars; it is OK.
Read
June 30, 2017There are so many excellent Native American writers. Why bother read a book about Native Americans written by a white woman, who was raised as a white kid in Apartheid. She was raised in the oppressor class, you get that right? She was raised entitled, white, and during Apartheid.
You would be hard pressed to find someone LESS qualified then Alexandra Fuller to write a book about Native Americans.
Not just writing about them, but as if she is one. She wrote this book as if she has an inner understanding of Native Americans lives. As if she, or any white person reading this, could have one inkling of understanding of what it is like to be raised as an Native American.
You know who does have an understanding? Any of these profoundly amazing writers:
Louise Eldrich
Janet Campbell Hale
Leslie Marmon SIlko
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Joy Harjo
Joan Naviyuk Kane
Deborah Miranda
Esther Belin
Adrian C. Louis (one of my favorite poets in the universe)
But you know who should NOT ever, ever, ever write a book about Native Americans?
A white woman born and raised in a colonized and oppressed country and where she was the utmost priveleged- due to her whiteness. A woman who is not Native American by any stretch of anyone's imagination. A white woman who feels so utterly privileged that she writes a book not only about Native Americans, but as if she is a Native American.
For future reference, when you need a blatant, "no-shit- WTF just happened here?" example of
WHITE ARROGANT PRIVILEGE, see Alexandra Fuller's "Quiet Until the Thaw."
This is such utter bullshit on a cosmic level that I can't imagine anyone on this green marble of an earth thinking this is a good idea. Did no one, absolutely no one at her publishing house say, "umm, this is straight up cultural appropriation."
You cannot do enough 'research', you cannot marry into, you cannot get a MA degree, you cannot live near a reservation and think that you have enough understanding to write other people's experience.
You just can't. And if you weren't steeped in the oceans of white privilege you were born into- you would know that.
**She did spend time on Pine Ridge and it would have been marvelous to read a book about her experience there. About how that dovetailed into her experience in Rhodesia, but this book, as well crafted and well written as it may be, is beyond the pale for me. Cultural appropriation at its finest.
You would be hard pressed to find someone LESS qualified then Alexandra Fuller to write a book about Native Americans.
Not just writing about them, but as if she is one. She wrote this book as if she has an inner understanding of Native Americans lives. As if she, or any white person reading this, could have one inkling of understanding of what it is like to be raised as an Native American.
You know who does have an understanding? Any of these profoundly amazing writers:
Louise Eldrich
Janet Campbell Hale
Leslie Marmon SIlko
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Joy Harjo
Joan Naviyuk Kane
Deborah Miranda
Esther Belin
Adrian C. Louis (one of my favorite poets in the universe)
But you know who should NOT ever, ever, ever write a book about Native Americans?
A white woman born and raised in a colonized and oppressed country and where she was the utmost priveleged- due to her whiteness. A woman who is not Native American by any stretch of anyone's imagination. A white woman who feels so utterly privileged that she writes a book not only about Native Americans, but as if she is a Native American.
For future reference, when you need a blatant, "no-shit- WTF just happened here?" example of
WHITE ARROGANT PRIVILEGE, see Alexandra Fuller's "Quiet Until the Thaw."
This is such utter bullshit on a cosmic level that I can't imagine anyone on this green marble of an earth thinking this is a good idea. Did no one, absolutely no one at her publishing house say, "umm, this is straight up cultural appropriation."
You cannot do enough 'research', you cannot marry into, you cannot get a MA degree, you cannot live near a reservation and think that you have enough understanding to write other people's experience.
You just can't. And if you weren't steeped in the oceans of white privilege you were born into- you would know that.
**She did spend time on Pine Ridge and it would have been marvelous to read a book about her experience there. About how that dovetailed into her experience in Rhodesia, but this book, as well crafted and well written as it may be, is beyond the pale for me. Cultural appropriation at its finest.
June 3, 2018
Fuller is clearly a talented writer, but there are deeper political issues at play in her writing of this particular novel. It simply isn't her story to write, quite frankly. And it just seems bizarre how unaware or unbothered she is by the ironies of her authoring an 'authentic Indian novel.'
If this sort of novel is remotely of interest to you, *PLEASE* support Native artists of the US, Canada, and Australia FIRST. There are the obvious big names: Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Linda Hogan, Thomas King, James Welch, Leslie Silko, and Scott Momaday. But there are the less-read or emerging that deserve your attention well before this novel. See anything by Stephen Graham Jones, David Treuer, Francis Washburn, Joseph Bruchac, Diane Glancy, Susan Power, Louis Owens, Greg Sarris, Darcy McNickle, Michael Dorris, Ella Cara Deloria, LeAnne Howe, Richard Wagamese, Richard Van Camp, Kim Scott's, Melissa Lucashenko, Alexis Wright, Larissa Behrendt, Jeanine Leane, or Claire Coleman
If this sort of novel is remotely of interest to you, *PLEASE* support Native artists of the US, Canada, and Australia FIRST. There are the obvious big names: Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Linda Hogan, Thomas King, James Welch, Leslie Silko, and Scott Momaday. But there are the less-read or emerging that deserve your attention well before this novel. See anything by Stephen Graham Jones, David Treuer, Francis Washburn, Joseph Bruchac, Diane Glancy, Susan Power, Louis Owens, Greg Sarris, Darcy McNickle, Michael Dorris, Ella Cara Deloria, LeAnne Howe, Richard Wagamese, Richard Van Camp, Kim Scott's, Melissa Lucashenko, Alexis Wright, Larissa Behrendt, Jeanine Leane, or Claire Coleman
September 24, 2017
I didn't enjoy this one. I wanted to. The blip on the jacket sounded great, but it left me feeling glad it was over. It covered so many things and for being such a short book, I'm not sure that wholly worked.
I appreciated the effort in detail, but much of that was a bunch of broad sweeping strokes that lacked the detail I enjoy, especially when it comes to emotion. The Indian detail was clear and present, but I guess I was wanting understanding. I crave that kind of connection and I must have missed that with this one. So 2 stars.
I appreciated the effort in detail, but much of that was a bunch of broad sweeping strokes that lacked the detail I enjoy, especially when it comes to emotion. The Indian detail was clear and present, but I guess I was wanting understanding. I crave that kind of connection and I must have missed that with this one. So 2 stars.
February 9, 2017
"Life is a circle and we as common people are created to stand within it and not on it. I am not just of the past but I am the past. I am here. I am now and I will be for tomorrow." Oglala Lakota maxim
Alexandra Fuller spent most of her life in Africa. In her letter which opens the galley of her debut novel Quiet Until the Thaw she writes that in encountering the Lakota Oglala Sioux she found an "unexpected homecoming, if home is where your soul can settle in recognition." The Native Americans were the only kindred spirits she had found in America. The love she bears her subject shines through every word and page and image.
On the Tex in the 1940s, two orphaned boys are suckled by a resentful Mina Overlooking Horse. At age forty she has raised a child every year for twenty-four years. She counts the years until the boys will be grown.
Rick Overlooking Horse keeps his words to himself, while You Choose Watson is determined to wreck his anger on the world, even to the point of self-destruction. Mina teaches Rick Overlooking Horse that the world is; nothing is taken away, nothing is added. He seeks to understand why he is in the world here, now.
Rick Overlooking Horse does not resist being drafted and sent to Vietnam; You Choose Watson fakes illness to avoid the draft. Rick Overlooking Horse survives horrendous injury. You Choose Watson escapes into drugs and alcohol and women, only intensifying his suffering.
The boys reach manhood and impact their world, each in their own way. Rick is at peace with a traditional way of life, a teacher of the old ways. You Choose struggles and lashes out. Both become involved with the American Indian Movement and the protest at Wounded Knee.
It is the context of the boy's stories that sets the novel apart: Fuller's awareness of the Lakota understanding of reality; the reminders that white society cut the native way of life at the root, leaving their people rudderless and lost in an alien reality, and suffering the homelessness of living where your people have always lived yet not able to recognize your own land.
Fuller's authorial voice is often heard, interjecting thoughtful insight into the Native American experience. In writing beautiful and eloquent, she charges the novel with emotional intensity and devastating revelation.
Fuller's previous books were memoirs and nonfiction. Her experiences in Africa inform her insight into the Native American experience.
"While she has not written anything overtly political, she says that everything we do is political from the decision we make to wake up in the morning to the clothes we put on our bodies, to the words we have the courage to speak.
"Africa is a great teacher," she has explained. "We're not a good example of much, but we're a terrible warning of power run amok and of the long, high price of oppression."
http://www.barclayagency.com/site/spe...
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Alexandra Fuller spent most of her life in Africa. In her letter which opens the galley of her debut novel Quiet Until the Thaw she writes that in encountering the Lakota Oglala Sioux she found an "unexpected homecoming, if home is where your soul can settle in recognition." The Native Americans were the only kindred spirits she had found in America. The love she bears her subject shines through every word and page and image.
On the Tex in the 1940s, two orphaned boys are suckled by a resentful Mina Overlooking Horse. At age forty she has raised a child every year for twenty-four years. She counts the years until the boys will be grown.
Rick Overlooking Horse keeps his words to himself, while You Choose Watson is determined to wreck his anger on the world, even to the point of self-destruction. Mina teaches Rick Overlooking Horse that the world is; nothing is taken away, nothing is added. He seeks to understand why he is in the world here, now.
Rick Overlooking Horse does not resist being drafted and sent to Vietnam; You Choose Watson fakes illness to avoid the draft. Rick Overlooking Horse survives horrendous injury. You Choose Watson escapes into drugs and alcohol and women, only intensifying his suffering.
The boys reach manhood and impact their world, each in their own way. Rick is at peace with a traditional way of life, a teacher of the old ways. You Choose struggles and lashes out. Both become involved with the American Indian Movement and the protest at Wounded Knee.
It is the context of the boy's stories that sets the novel apart: Fuller's awareness of the Lakota understanding of reality; the reminders that white society cut the native way of life at the root, leaving their people rudderless and lost in an alien reality, and suffering the homelessness of living where your people have always lived yet not able to recognize your own land.
Fuller's authorial voice is often heard, interjecting thoughtful insight into the Native American experience. In writing beautiful and eloquent, she charges the novel with emotional intensity and devastating revelation.
Fuller's previous books were memoirs and nonfiction. Her experiences in Africa inform her insight into the Native American experience.
"While she has not written anything overtly political, she says that everything we do is political from the decision we make to wake up in the morning to the clothes we put on our bodies, to the words we have the courage to speak.
"Africa is a great teacher," she has explained. "We're not a good example of much, but we're a terrible warning of power run amok and of the long, high price of oppression."
http://www.barclayagency.com/site/spe...
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
July 20, 2017
I'm seriously not sure what I read, but it was amusingly told by a rather self-aware narrator. Not much is actually amusing. It's a generational tale, one old lady reluctantly fosters her grandson Rick Overlooking Horse, and another child of uncertain provenance, You Choose Watson. Rick is stoic, upstanding and hardly says a word. You Choose is a whole lot more gregarious, and quick to temper. He's a draft dodger whereas Rick gets himself caught in a friendly napalm explosion and loses an eye.
Rick comes back and becomes a kind of a medicine man, and raises war ponies. He talks still less. The other one comes back and becomes a kind of a tribal leader who supports violence. He has several followers in the disaffected youth of the reservation. The reservation turns a terrible place to live until he loses all control and gets hauled off to jail. When he comes back after 30 years, Rick himself is raising two children who were abandoned.
That's the plot, but I'm not quite sure what the book is trying to say. In some parts, it's cliche. Rick Overlooking Horse is the kind of grave, silent Native American man I've been schooled to expect by so many . I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be comfortable with that. (If I have to ask, I guess I'm actually uncomfortable). Especially given that Alexandra Fuller isn't actually Native American. But there's also Watson, who somehow becomes a politician after being wholly unqualified for it, and I'm not sure what the basis for that is. He's a tinpot dictator, drunk on power, so I'm going to give Fuller the benefit of doubt. She has a highly amusing voice, but I don't really know what this is supposed to be.
Rick comes back and becomes a kind of a medicine man, and raises war ponies. He talks still less. The other one comes back and becomes a kind of a tribal leader who supports violence. He has several followers in the disaffected youth of the reservation. The reservation turns a terrible place to live until he loses all control and gets hauled off to jail. When he comes back after 30 years, Rick himself is raising two children who were abandoned.
That's the plot, but I'm not quite sure what the book is trying to say. In some parts, it's cliche. Rick Overlooking Horse is the kind of grave, silent Native American man I've been schooled to expect by so many . I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be comfortable with that. (If I have to ask, I guess I'm actually uncomfortable). Especially given that Alexandra Fuller isn't actually Native American. But there's also Watson, who somehow becomes a politician after being wholly unqualified for it, and I'm not sure what the basis for that is. He's a tinpot dictator, drunk on power, so I'm going to give Fuller the benefit of doubt. She has a highly amusing voice, but I don't really know what this is supposed to be.
April 30, 2020
Can a white, British-Zimbabwean author write about the Oglala Lakota people of "the Rez" without being (a) unrealistic or (b) condescending? Sure. It's possible. I don't think cultural appropriation is inevitable. In this case, however, Alexandra Fuller has failed her readers and the people she's writing about.
Quiet Until the Thaw is an easy read, fast moving and engaging. It's funny. But that's the problem: reaching for humor, she puts her characters into situations that turn them alternatively into human punching bags or objects of ridicule - sometimes both at the same time. Because the story is so fast moving, we don't often know what motivates the characters to say what they say and do what they do.
If there's a point to the book, it seems to be that life for the Oglala Lakota in the 20th and 21st centuries is fundamentally absurd. It's a part - one part out of many - of what we see in the work of, say, Louise Erdrich. Unlike Erdrich, though, Fuller gives us a simplistic world populated with caricatured characters. Building that world and calling it "the Rez," as if she were a part of it, doesn't entitle Fuller to pretend that she knows what makes it tick.
Quiet Until the Thaw is an easy read, fast moving and engaging. It's funny. But that's the problem: reaching for humor, she puts her characters into situations that turn them alternatively into human punching bags or objects of ridicule - sometimes both at the same time. Because the story is so fast moving, we don't often know what motivates the characters to say what they say and do what they do.
If there's a point to the book, it seems to be that life for the Oglala Lakota in the 20th and 21st centuries is fundamentally absurd. It's a part - one part out of many - of what we see in the work of, say, Louise Erdrich. Unlike Erdrich, though, Fuller gives us a simplistic world populated with caricatured characters. Building that world and calling it "the Rez," as if she were a part of it, doesn't entitle Fuller to pretend that she knows what makes it tick.
August 21, 2021
Is it the stars under which we are born that will affect the course of our lives? Or was it everything else that was in the process of being born on the day of our births....? p 20
People don't cause chaos, foment rebellion, and use their bodies as a form of stubborn protest because they have nothing else to do. People do these things because they have nothing left to lose. p122
Can a person write about something they have not directly experienced?
I believe its called fiction, or fantasy, for certain.
Yes there is such a thing as cultural appropriation, and most abhorrent is a writer who claims authenticity based on hearsay and wisps of legends and chunks of other peoples experience without acknowledgement. Alexandra Fuller is not one of those. This novel flows out of her love and appreciation of Native culture and she does not stray too far from her role as witness.
If the people of a nation are violently forced to give up their traditions, their way of life, their understanding of the earth....then what follows is almost inevitable....p113
Even if we stopped everything right now, all the war and abuse and hurt and injury, and treated one another with love, we'd still have generations to go. p169
The story features a rez and the people that call it home. In particular, AF focuses on the divergent paths of two men brought up together and the way their paths converged. If the kernel of the characters may stem from stereotypes, she has coloured them gloriously.
It takes an Indian amount of knowing to understand that rocks are grandfathers, plants are nations...that Thunderclouds are not only beings but Higher Beings. p20
Meditations on memory and time wind through the tale, giving it a kind of timeless feeling, even though the setting is modern.
Time was not stable. Time was like wind, or currents. It did not plod forward; it could flow backwards or spiral inwards, or slide around....All time was possible, all the time.The only skill needed was an ability to pilot the tides. p46
In any case,memory wobbles and floods. p132
To believe in the doneness of time and the acts committed in that time, is wishful thinking. The truth is, no one is ever done with the past,any more than it is possible to be done with the future. ...they wash into now and there is no stopping them. p169
People don't cause chaos, foment rebellion, and use their bodies as a form of stubborn protest because they have nothing else to do. People do these things because they have nothing left to lose. p122
Can a person write about something they have not directly experienced?
I believe its called fiction, or fantasy, for certain.
Yes there is such a thing as cultural appropriation, and most abhorrent is a writer who claims authenticity based on hearsay and wisps of legends and chunks of other peoples experience without acknowledgement. Alexandra Fuller is not one of those. This novel flows out of her love and appreciation of Native culture and she does not stray too far from her role as witness.
If the people of a nation are violently forced to give up their traditions, their way of life, their understanding of the earth....then what follows is almost inevitable....p113
Even if we stopped everything right now, all the war and abuse and hurt and injury, and treated one another with love, we'd still have generations to go. p169
The story features a rez and the people that call it home. In particular, AF focuses on the divergent paths of two men brought up together and the way their paths converged. If the kernel of the characters may stem from stereotypes, she has coloured them gloriously.
It takes an Indian amount of knowing to understand that rocks are grandfathers, plants are nations...that Thunderclouds are not only beings but Higher Beings. p20
Meditations on memory and time wind through the tale, giving it a kind of timeless feeling, even though the setting is modern.
Time was not stable. Time was like wind, or currents. It did not plod forward; it could flow backwards or spiral inwards, or slide around....All time was possible, all the time.The only skill needed was an ability to pilot the tides. p46
In any case,memory wobbles and floods. p132
To believe in the doneness of time and the acts committed in that time, is wishful thinking. The truth is, no one is ever done with the past,any more than it is possible to be done with the future. ...they wash into now and there is no stopping them. p169
July 2, 2017
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The culture and oppression of the Lakota Oglala is well told in this story of two cousins, and the diverse directions their life choices takes them. I am not certain, though, that the author, a white woman, is fully qualified to basically speak for the Lakota Oglala, however much time she spent with them. Only my opinion.
The culture and oppression of the Lakota Oglala is well told in this story of two cousins, and the diverse directions their life choices takes them. I am not certain, though, that the author, a white woman, is fully qualified to basically speak for the Lakota Oglala, however much time she spent with them. Only my opinion.
July 19, 2017
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. I don't know for sure if I want to give this 4 stars or 3. A very interesting book about life on the "Rez", and the traditional teachings of the Lakota Tribe, but kind of a strong sense that the white man is the only one to blame. I am not Indian, but I have lived in eastern South Dakota my entire 64 years. This is a sad story, but I just want to point out that there are no winners, no matter what side you take. I remember a bit about the events that Ms. Fuller writes about in reference to Pine Ridge and Whiteclay.
I think I will leave my rating at 4 stars. Ms. Fuller has written a good example of traditional Lakota beliefs, and even brings up, a little bit, about things that the government did try to do for them. The things the government did to try and help were from the white mans perspective and culture of helping, but it was pretty much the opposite 0f what the Lakota were trying to teach their children about their culture and beliefs.
I think I will leave my rating at 4 stars. Ms. Fuller has written a good example of traditional Lakota beliefs, and even brings up, a little bit, about things that the government did try to do for them. The things the government did to try and help were from the white mans perspective and culture of helping, but it was pretty much the opposite 0f what the Lakota were trying to teach their children about their culture and beliefs.
November 15, 2021
3.5 stars.
Any charge of cultural appropriation deserves consideration and investigation. Some reviewers and critics have charged Fuller, a white woman raised in colonial Africa, of that here, writing a novel about the Lakota Oglala of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. And it's her first novel (2017) after nearly 20 years of primarily writing memoirs. Incredible, really. I've only read "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness," but it's stayed with me, and I wanted to see what she could do with fiction.
I occasionally saw glimpses of pastiche here, but mostly Fuller's tone sounded "right" to me. She works in well-researched historical events with fictional characters and describes years and cycles of oppression, violence and poverty both directly and poetically. I found the effect or end result quite startling and stirring.
I'm glad for having read some of the more critical reviews. They furthered a necessary dialogue, but I also think Fuller contributes a substantial, responsible and at times very beautiful, work of art here - not to be read in place of James Welch or Leslie Marmon Silko, but in addition to.
Any charge of cultural appropriation deserves consideration and investigation. Some reviewers and critics have charged Fuller, a white woman raised in colonial Africa, of that here, writing a novel about the Lakota Oglala of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. And it's her first novel (2017) after nearly 20 years of primarily writing memoirs. Incredible, really. I've only read "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness," but it's stayed with me, and I wanted to see what she could do with fiction.
I occasionally saw glimpses of pastiche here, but mostly Fuller's tone sounded "right" to me. She works in well-researched historical events with fictional characters and describes years and cycles of oppression, violence and poverty both directly and poetically. I found the effect or end result quite startling and stirring.
I'm glad for having read some of the more critical reviews. They furthered a necessary dialogue, but I also think Fuller contributes a substantial, responsible and at times very beautiful, work of art here - not to be read in place of James Welch or Leslie Marmon Silko, but in addition to.
February 14, 2017
Alexandra Fuller's Quiet Until the Thaw is a compelling novel that manages to be funny and sad, satiric and sincere, clever...and deadly serious about the history of the government's policies concerning Native Americans and the way those policies have played out.
In a portion about the forced removal of children from their families to place them in Indian Boarding Schools (which were mostly shut down by 2007), Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are caught running to escape the Bureau of Indian Affairs officers who are chasing them. Another boy is caught along with Rick and You Choose--Billy Mills, the fasted kid on the Rez, but even he is not fast enough to escape.
A paragraph or so later, there is a mention of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and an announcer is shouting: "Look at Mills! Look at Mills!" Billy Mills couldn't run fast enough to escape the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but he eventually won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics--for real.
It is this mixture of real people and real events along with the fictional stories of Rick Overlooking Horse, You Choose Watson, Squanto, and Le-a Brings Plenty that gives the novel a quiet authority.
The problems and history of life on the Rez are not avoided or minimized, but they are not treated in the way one would expect. The problems are part of the story and part of the characters who inhabit the novel.
From early on, Fuller makes a point of how many Indians have filled the ranks of the military over the years from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and through Desert Storm. Squanto, during Desert Storm has reason to remember what Rick Overlooking Horse has told him:
"Remember this: There will be nothing to signal the start of your war. There will be nothing to signal its end. There's just your war. Only you will know it when it has started, and only you can choose when it will end."
The novel shifts from character to character and from event to event, and I loved Fuller's prose which kept me engaged the entire time. I've pondered this review for the last ten days or so and find myself unable to genuinely relate how good I think the book is. I've written entire paragraphs and deleted them. For infinitely better and more thorough reviews, check out Sam and Nancy's reviews on Goodreads.
In a flashback at the end of the book, Rick Overlooking Horse has been telling the "wonderful, terrible tales of how the whole world came to be," to young Daniel and Jerusalem Brings Plenty and Jerusalem asks, "how does it end?"
The old man replies, "It ends well. It doesn't end soon, but it ends well. All of it."
Don't miss this one.
NetGalley/Penguin Group.
Native American/literary fiction. June 27, 2017. Print length: 288 pages.
In a portion about the forced removal of children from their families to place them in Indian Boarding Schools (which were mostly shut down by 2007), Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are caught running to escape the Bureau of Indian Affairs officers who are chasing them. Another boy is caught along with Rick and You Choose--Billy Mills, the fasted kid on the Rez, but even he is not fast enough to escape.
A paragraph or so later, there is a mention of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and an announcer is shouting: "Look at Mills! Look at Mills!" Billy Mills couldn't run fast enough to escape the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but he eventually won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics--for real.
It is this mixture of real people and real events along with the fictional stories of Rick Overlooking Horse, You Choose Watson, Squanto, and Le-a Brings Plenty that gives the novel a quiet authority.
The problems and history of life on the Rez are not avoided or minimized, but they are not treated in the way one would expect. The problems are part of the story and part of the characters who inhabit the novel.
From early on, Fuller makes a point of how many Indians have filled the ranks of the military over the years from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and through Desert Storm. Squanto, during Desert Storm has reason to remember what Rick Overlooking Horse has told him:
"Remember this: There will be nothing to signal the start of your war. There will be nothing to signal its end. There's just your war. Only you will know it when it has started, and only you can choose when it will end."
The novel shifts from character to character and from event to event, and I loved Fuller's prose which kept me engaged the entire time. I've pondered this review for the last ten days or so and find myself unable to genuinely relate how good I think the book is. I've written entire paragraphs and deleted them. For infinitely better and more thorough reviews, check out Sam and Nancy's reviews on Goodreads.
In a flashback at the end of the book, Rick Overlooking Horse has been telling the "wonderful, terrible tales of how the whole world came to be," to young Daniel and Jerusalem Brings Plenty and Jerusalem asks, "how does it end?"
The old man replies, "It ends well. It doesn't end soon, but it ends well. All of it."
Don't miss this one.
NetGalley/Penguin Group.
Native American/literary fiction. June 27, 2017. Print length: 288 pages.
November 22, 2021
I didn't realize until after I read this that it wasn't even written by an indigenous author, which really explains a lot. The story seemed mostly inauthentic and jumped around so much as to make it distracting. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson grow up in similar circumstances yet turn out to have vastly different futures. One becomes a drunk looking for trouble and the other finds himself in Vietnam and then later raising two orphan boys. Far more than just their two lives intersecting there are short vignettes about their friends and others struggling on the reservation. Too jumpy and sporadic. There are good parts, they are just buried.
September 10, 2018
ARC. Didn't realize it was fiction. Three page chapters, no character development and minimal story. Why would she think she could tell Lakota story?
August 21, 2017
This is a tough book to review because I can't tease the story away from the person who wrote it and what that means within a larger context. Fuller is a talented writer, in that her short chapters are like delicate pieces of art. However, the story as a whole is more complicated. No matter how beautifully told, this is still a story about a people of which Fuller does not pertain. She spent three months on the Pine Ridge Reservation for research and that seems like a woefully small amount of time to immerse oneself in a culture before writing authoritatively about its history and its people. Many great writers have spent lifetimes living amongst cultures foreign to them and still fail to portray them with the nuance they deserve. In an interview, Fuller is asked about her thoughts on how people might react to a white woman writing about life on a Native American reservation and she responds that she has put a lot of thought into it (of course). Ultimately, she says she wants to direct the conversation towards "white settlers" and not with the indigenous community. But what does that mean? There is nothing to the book that I can point to that indicates this is a book for beginning conversations about colonialism and oppression. For that reason, it feels as if she said that simply because it is the "right" thing and not because there was really any strong intention on her part to get people to question dominant narratives.
October 18, 2017
Alexandra Fuller’s exploration of contemporary Native American life follows the lives of cousins Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson as they each navigate their path through an often difficult and conflicted existence. Each chooses a different approach; one tries to live peacefully, the other chooses violence, and their lives become inextricably entwined. It’s not so much a conventional narrative as a series of vignettes, taking the reader deep into the reservation and examining issues of heritage, ancestry, oppression and continuing injustices. It’s a thoughtful book, and delves deep into Lakota culture and heritage and felt to me to be authentic and empathetic. Some reviewers have criticised the book for not accurately reflecting Native American life, but without really explaining what they mean, and for me Fuller succeeds in her depiction and it all felt convincing. I enjoyed the book on the whole although the sometimes disjointed narrative style and the short chapters irritated and I never quite felt I’d really got to know the central characters. Nevertheless it’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking novel and well worth reading.
February 17, 2020
Lauran Groff recently wrote in the NYTimes, "The major objection to cultural appropriation has always been about the abuse of power: inadequate research, halfhearted imagination and lack of respect, the privileged assumption of the right to speak on behalf of a people who are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves." I don't take Fuller to be doing the latter, and she is far from guilty of any of the former.
July 30, 2020
As far as I know her first novel and so good~ reminded me a bit of Vonnegut. Tough, real, witty, sometimes hilarious.
February 22, 2020
Best book I have read in a while. Insightful, sad, hopeful, real, and beautifully written. It will also bring the reader to what for most will be a reset awareness of the scandalous treatment of the Native Americans tribes in this (their) country.
August 18, 2021
The problematic nature of a non-Native person writing a novel about Native experiences keeps me from giving this book five stars. Growing up in this area of the country her depiction of the land and its harshness were achingly beautiful.
April 14, 2025
This is a short but thoughtful book about two Lakota cousins (Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson) and how different their lives are, despite their shared heritage. It feels like an accurate portrayal of what the Native Americans have endured at the hands of the federal government and how they have chosen (often in different ways) to deal with their lot in life while still holding on to their traditions. There seems to be some anger that this book was written by a white woman, but I don't see how this is harmful if she is fair and bringing light to a tragic situation. The characters are well-rounded and real, and the humor is appropriate.
July 31, 2017
Alexandra Fuller is a marvelous writer and is definitely not afraid to share a point of view, even in fiction. This is a very thoughtful and interesting short novel which illustrates the plight of our Native Americans. I definitely recommend it.
September 15, 2017
http://openbooksociety.com/article/qu...
Quiet Until the Thaw
Author: Alexandra Fuller
ISBN13: 9780735223349
Author website: http://alexandrafuller.org/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Kayt
Synopsis:
From bestselling memoirist Alexandra Fuller, a debut novel.
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger towards the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.
Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys, orphaned at birth, in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys within their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be, and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.
A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected. As Fuller writes, “The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly.”
Review:
I was very excited to read Quiet Until the Thaw. I was so looking forward to reading a book that from all I saw would be an interesting glimpse into the lives of two Native American cousins, written by someone with a good reputation for intelligent writing. I was disappointed. I do not know why I expected a white woman from South Africa to be able to write a novel that is able to portray the Native American life in any way except the normal cliché. She may have lived on a “rez” (a word so over used in this read standing for reservation) for several months, but I do not think that gave her a voice to speak the pain and love that has to be the heart of the Native American people. I am not, nor do I claim to be any part Native American. I do not know what it is to grow up in their culture. I am however pretty sure the movies do not get it right and every step of the way in this novel, I stumbled over the clumsy attempts to step into their lives and relate them to the reader. It really reads like it is written by someone who spent ONLY 3 months on the reservation.
Quiet Until the Thaw is set in the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. It tells the story of two cousins who could not be any more different than the man in the moon and a true Native American. They seem to be from two different places, not only in attitude, but in their hearts. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson were raised by their grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse. This book tells their story through the voices of several characters and all in a staggered voice that I can only assume is supposed to mimic a Native American way of speech. For me it was difficult and not enjoyable. It almost made the speech read unintelligent as if the speaker was not very bright. The story goes between different time periods and does not have the flow of other books that are able to do this without as much of a hiccup effect.
The novel takes the reader through the life of both boys as they grow to adults. Rick Overlooking Horse growing into the more “traditional” life, staying on the reservation and just being a marvelous person. You Choose Watson grows into a person quite the opposite. He does horribly in boarding school, military and then ends up in prison. He is a drunk and feels the world owes him everything. He is half cowboy and that seems to be a monkey on his shoulder at times. He comes back home only to cause even more trouble, even becoming a politician. Although that appears to be more for what he can get out of it than how he can serve others. Their grandmother knew these things would happen and was not surprised when they followed the paths they did.
I am sure this novel will be loved by many. I did not and I really wanted to enjoy it. The characters are at times enjoyable (well not You Choose), but I was not able to connect to any of them or even find any honesty in their portrayals. I did not care for the phrasing or voice of the characters. And I had a hard time feeling anything for most of the characters. I feel the book is full of the old cliché Native American stereotypes and that made me sad. What I had hoped would be of immense interest to me, was a letdown.
*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*
Quiet Until the Thaw
Author: Alexandra Fuller
ISBN13: 9780735223349
Author website: http://alexandrafuller.org/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Kayt
Synopsis:
From bestselling memoirist Alexandra Fuller, a debut novel.
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger towards the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.
Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys, orphaned at birth, in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys within their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be, and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.
A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures with the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected. As Fuller writes, “The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth. The past is nudging at us constantly.”
Review:
I was very excited to read Quiet Until the Thaw. I was so looking forward to reading a book that from all I saw would be an interesting glimpse into the lives of two Native American cousins, written by someone with a good reputation for intelligent writing. I was disappointed. I do not know why I expected a white woman from South Africa to be able to write a novel that is able to portray the Native American life in any way except the normal cliché. She may have lived on a “rez” (a word so over used in this read standing for reservation) for several months, but I do not think that gave her a voice to speak the pain and love that has to be the heart of the Native American people. I am not, nor do I claim to be any part Native American. I do not know what it is to grow up in their culture. I am however pretty sure the movies do not get it right and every step of the way in this novel, I stumbled over the clumsy attempts to step into their lives and relate them to the reader. It really reads like it is written by someone who spent ONLY 3 months on the reservation.
Quiet Until the Thaw is set in the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. It tells the story of two cousins who could not be any more different than the man in the moon and a true Native American. They seem to be from two different places, not only in attitude, but in their hearts. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson were raised by their grandmother Mina Overlooking Horse. This book tells their story through the voices of several characters and all in a staggered voice that I can only assume is supposed to mimic a Native American way of speech. For me it was difficult and not enjoyable. It almost made the speech read unintelligent as if the speaker was not very bright. The story goes between different time periods and does not have the flow of other books that are able to do this without as much of a hiccup effect.
The novel takes the reader through the life of both boys as they grow to adults. Rick Overlooking Horse growing into the more “traditional” life, staying on the reservation and just being a marvelous person. You Choose Watson grows into a person quite the opposite. He does horribly in boarding school, military and then ends up in prison. He is a drunk and feels the world owes him everything. He is half cowboy and that seems to be a monkey on his shoulder at times. He comes back home only to cause even more trouble, even becoming a politician. Although that appears to be more for what he can get out of it than how he can serve others. Their grandmother knew these things would happen and was not surprised when they followed the paths they did.
I am sure this novel will be loved by many. I did not and I really wanted to enjoy it. The characters are at times enjoyable (well not You Choose), but I was not able to connect to any of them or even find any honesty in their portrayals. I did not care for the phrasing or voice of the characters. And I had a hard time feeling anything for most of the characters. I feel the book is full of the old cliché Native American stereotypes and that made me sad. What I had hoped would be of immense interest to me, was a letdown.
*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*
July 28, 2023
Fictionalized history of modern Native Americans. Presented in vignettes which seem to lend itself to their storytelling culture. A departure for Fuller, still good.
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