What do you think?
Rate this book
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
After 20 years of living in the "Great American Outback," as Newsweek magazine once designated the Dakotas, poet Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) came to understand the fascinating ways that people become metaphors for the land they inhabit. When trying to understand the polarizing contradictions that exist in the Dakotas between "hospitality and insularity, change and inertia, stability and instability.... between hope and despair, between open hearts and closed minds," Norris draws a map. "We are at the point of transition between east and west in the United States," she explains, "geographically and psychically isolated from either coast, and unlike either the Midwest or the desert west."
Like Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge), Norris understands how the boundary between inner and outer scenery begins to blur when one is fully present in the landscape of their lives. As a result, she offers the geography lesson we all longed for in school. This is a poetic, noble, and often funny (see her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and churchgoers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson
Audible Audio
First published January 1, 1993
278 people are currently reading
3898 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Norris
127 books453 followersKathleen Norris was born on July 27, 1947 in Washington, D.C. She grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, as well as on her maternal grandparents’ farm in Lemmon, South Dakota.
Her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared for the world she encountered when she began attending Bennington College in Vermont. At first shocked by the unconventionality surrounding her, Norris took refuge in poetry.
After she graduated in 1969, she moved to New York City where she joined the arts scene, associated with members of the avant-garde movement including Andy Warhol, and worked for the American Academy of Poets.
In 1974, her grandmother died leaving Norris the family farm in South Dakota, and she and her future husband, the poet David Dwyer, decided to temporarily relocate there until arrangements to rent or sell the property could be made. Instead, they ended up remaining in South Dakota for the next 25 years.
Soon after moving to the rural prairie, Norris developed a relationship with the nearby Benedictine abbey, which led to her eventually becoming an oblate.
In 2000, Norris and her husband traded their farmhouse on the Great Plains for a condo in Honolulu, Hawaii, so that Norris could help care for her aging parents after her husband’s own failing health no longer permitted him to travel. Her father died in 2002, and her husband died the following year in 2003.
Her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared for the world she encountered when she began attending Bennington College in Vermont. At first shocked by the unconventionality surrounding her, Norris took refuge in poetry.
After she graduated in 1969, she moved to New York City where she joined the arts scene, associated with members of the avant-garde movement including Andy Warhol, and worked for the American Academy of Poets.
In 1974, her grandmother died leaving Norris the family farm in South Dakota, and she and her future husband, the poet David Dwyer, decided to temporarily relocate there until arrangements to rent or sell the property could be made. Instead, they ended up remaining in South Dakota for the next 25 years.
Soon after moving to the rural prairie, Norris developed a relationship with the nearby Benedictine abbey, which led to her eventually becoming an oblate.
In 2000, Norris and her husband traded their farmhouse on the Great Plains for a condo in Honolulu, Hawaii, so that Norris could help care for her aging parents after her husband’s own failing health no longer permitted him to travel. Her father died in 2002, and her husband died the following year in 2003.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 463 reviews
September 17, 2025
I just remembered that I had read this. it's heartfelt and beautifully written.
November 19, 2021
Only a poet could write about nature like this. This is part memoir, part regional history, part religion, part "spiritual geography. " Spiritual geography is how where you are from becomes a part of your spiritual expression. We all naturally have a spiritual geography but Norris shows how the wonder and beauty of the Great Plains- with those Great Spaces-and Big Sky -with-Thousands-of-Stars is intertwined in the lives of those who live in the West (specifically South Dakota). It must be like looking at God all the time. Norris goes from discussing the regional history to intertwining her experiences in religious life within the Protestant churches as well as a nearby monastery.
I love how she shares the perspectives of those around her and I love the vignettes that feel like poems. I'll say it: this is better than poetry and this is what poetry aspires to be. This remains one of the most beautiful books I've read on spirituality. I hope it becomes a classic.
I love how she shares the perspectives of those around her and I love the vignettes that feel like poems. I'll say it: this is better than poetry and this is what poetry aspires to be. This remains one of the most beautiful books I've read on spirituality. I hope it becomes a classic.
October 14, 2015
Kathleen Norris and her husband David Dwyer, both poets, left a thriving New York City arts community to live in South Dakota in 1974. Norris' family had inherited her grandmother's farm in Lemmon, a small town in northwestern South Dakota. Although they had originally planned on staying for only a few years, the couple decided to make it their permanent residence. In addition to their writing, they picked up a succession of part-time jobs to carve out a living.
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography is a collection of essays, poems, and quotes. The author writes about the stark beauty of the acres of grassland and the vast sky. It is a challenging place to live with its winds, lack of rain, dust storms, extremely hot summers, and frigid winters. Most of the towns west of the Missouri River are sparsely populated with little economic opportunity, and located many miles away from gas stations and shopping. Native Americans are especially impoverished. Western South Dakota is a place that gets considered for missile silos and nuclear waste sites because there are few inhabitants. Life is less materialistic in the western Dakotas. Things are slow to change in the small towns, but the people are strong and willing to help each other. Norris finds that she is contemplative and finds a sense of spirituality in the quiet, stark environment of the Dakotas.
Norris is an ecumenical Protestant who has worked as a lay Presbyterian pastor. She is also an oblate, a lay member of a Benedictine community. She writes about her retreats at the Dakota monastery where there is time for introspection. The sense of community, the joy of religious chants, and the hospitality and playfulness of the monks are important to her. Norris does not discuss specific religious beliefs, but rather the emotional aspects of spirituality and community.
Norris has written a book with a strong sense of place. The Great Plains seems to be a good fit for her spiritual nature, need for inner peace, and the contemplative life of a poet.
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography is a collection of essays, poems, and quotes. The author writes about the stark beauty of the acres of grassland and the vast sky. It is a challenging place to live with its winds, lack of rain, dust storms, extremely hot summers, and frigid winters. Most of the towns west of the Missouri River are sparsely populated with little economic opportunity, and located many miles away from gas stations and shopping. Native Americans are especially impoverished. Western South Dakota is a place that gets considered for missile silos and nuclear waste sites because there are few inhabitants. Life is less materialistic in the western Dakotas. Things are slow to change in the small towns, but the people are strong and willing to help each other. Norris finds that she is contemplative and finds a sense of spirituality in the quiet, stark environment of the Dakotas.
Norris is an ecumenical Protestant who has worked as a lay Presbyterian pastor. She is also an oblate, a lay member of a Benedictine community. She writes about her retreats at the Dakota monastery where there is time for introspection. The sense of community, the joy of religious chants, and the hospitality and playfulness of the monks are important to her. Norris does not discuss specific religious beliefs, but rather the emotional aspects of spirituality and community.
Norris has written a book with a strong sense of place. The Great Plains seems to be a good fit for her spiritual nature, need for inner peace, and the contemplative life of a poet.
June 1, 2012
“Nature, in Dakota, can indeed be an experience of the holy.”
I ran across a review of Dakota on Goodreads, and couldn’t believe I had not heard of this book before. As a native North Dakotan and someone who is on a faith journey herself, Dakota seemed to be a must read for me.
The author, Kathleen Norris, has had an interesting journey in her own right. She was born in Washington DC, but spent summers in South Dakota with her grandparents. Eventually, she found her calling as a writer (poetry, to be exact) and furthered her career in New York City. Like many of us who left small towns and suburbia for urban centers, Ms. Norris felt that she had outgrown the religion she grew up with. And yet, she still had a spiritual longing. In Dakota, through a series of essays and poems, the reader is able to journey with Kathleen Norris as she navigates her spiritual inheritance and finally makes peace with it.
“Ironically, it is in choosing the stability of the monastery or the Plains, places where nothing ever happens, places the world calls dull, that we discover that we can change. In choosing a bare-bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.”
This is such a beautiful book. Norris’ writing is breathtaking and in Dakota, she bares her soul in an effort of devotion and instruction. I will have to read this again and again.
I ran across a review of Dakota on Goodreads, and couldn’t believe I had not heard of this book before. As a native North Dakotan and someone who is on a faith journey herself, Dakota seemed to be a must read for me.
The author, Kathleen Norris, has had an interesting journey in her own right. She was born in Washington DC, but spent summers in South Dakota with her grandparents. Eventually, she found her calling as a writer (poetry, to be exact) and furthered her career in New York City. Like many of us who left small towns and suburbia for urban centers, Ms. Norris felt that she had outgrown the religion she grew up with. And yet, she still had a spiritual longing. In Dakota, through a series of essays and poems, the reader is able to journey with Kathleen Norris as she navigates her spiritual inheritance and finally makes peace with it.
“Ironically, it is in choosing the stability of the monastery or the Plains, places where nothing ever happens, places the world calls dull, that we discover that we can change. In choosing a bare-bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.”
This is such a beautiful book. Norris’ writing is breathtaking and in Dakota, she bares her soul in an effort of devotion and instruction. I will have to read this again and again.
October 8, 2017
My third from Norris, one of the most profound spiritual writers I know. Although this is more niche than Amazing Grace and The Cloister Walk, its lessons about slowing down and savoring the peace of solitude and wide open spaces are still widely applicable. In moving from New York City to her grandparents’ home in Lemmon, South Dakota, Norris left behind career and cultural opportunities but gained a healthier pace of life and sense of community. She also recognizes the challenges of small-town life, though, such as hostility to newcomers and fresh ideas.
As usual, her thoughts are arranged in miniature topical essays, here interspersed with regular “Weather Reports” that provide a sense of a typical year’s passing. You don’t need to live in (or have ever visited) the Plains to appreciate the conclusions she draws about facing up to reality and pursuing routes of positive change. There are far too many great lines to quote them all, but here are some that struck me:
My copy came free from the Book Thing of Baltimore.
As usual, her thoughts are arranged in miniature topical essays, here interspersed with regular “Weather Reports” that provide a sense of a typical year’s passing. You don’t need to live in (or have ever visited) the Plains to appreciate the conclusions she draws about facing up to reality and pursuing routes of positive change. There are far too many great lines to quote them all, but here are some that struck me:
“The Plains are not forgiving. Anything that is shallow – the easy optimism of a homesteader the false hope that denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach ground water – will dry up and blow away.”
“Fear is not a bad place to start a spiritual journey. If you know what makes you afraid, you can see more clearly that the way out is through the fear.”
“Conversion means starting with who we are, not who we wish we were. It means knowing where we come from.”
“A fledgling ascetic, I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.”
“Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others.”
“Ironically, it is in choosing the stability of the monastery or the Plains, places where nothing ever happens, places the world calls dull, that we discover we can change. In choosing a bare-bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.”
My copy came free from the Book Thing of Baltimore.
December 28, 2013
I liked her Weather Reports, I liked the short poetic bursts about life on the high plains, I liked her parallels between Dakota and a monastic life. What I'm not sure I liked yet was her tone. At times I felt it was condescending as in "Well, I moved to Dakota from NYC, now let me tell you about these simple folk."
I understand that some of this might be because she is writing as an outsider- this is one of the places on Earth where anyone who isn't born there will always be an outsider. I understand that it might sound weird to me because she is writing about a region and the kind of people that I am familiar with (albeit one state to the South). Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that her move and her life in Lemmon, SD were some kind of luxurious experiment; something to be written about, rather than anything authentic.
I understand that some of this might be because she is writing as an outsider- this is one of the places on Earth where anyone who isn't born there will always be an outsider. I understand that it might sound weird to me because she is writing about a region and the kind of people that I am familiar with (albeit one state to the South). Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that her move and her life in Lemmon, SD were some kind of luxurious experiment; something to be written about, rather than anything authentic.
July 14, 2018
I acquired this book (used) sometime in the late 1990s. I'd liked another book of Norris's, The Cloister Walk, and thought I might like this one, but Dakota didn't grab me and at some point during our globetrotting years, I packed it in a box and forgot about it.
My father died in 2008. For several months I was able to put my grief on hold by focusing on the tasks of settling his affairs, selling his house, packing up (or giving away) his possessions. A lot of stuff ended up in our basement and as I attempted to winnow down the boxes of our stuff to make way for his, I discovered Dakota and I guess the time was right.
Norris describes the western town of Lemmon, Dakota as a landscape scoured out by the wind. Barren, harsh, unforgiving: she seemed to be describing my emotional landscape.
Norris quotes St. Hilary, a fourth-century bishop: “Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.” She describes western Dakota as “a terrifying but beautiful landscape in which we are at the mercy of the unexpected.” Somehow this spoke to me, the idea that, when you are bereft of every comfort, you may recollect yourself -- she uses this monastic term, and it touched me profoundly. I found myself remembering my father's gentleness, his kindness and I saw how I could keep his presence with me by bringing this aspect of him into my interactions with others.
A friend of mine recently suffered a terrible loss. I sent him a copy of this book, and decided to reread it myself. I am not in the same place as I was ten years ago, and yet I still find comfort in Norris's words. Here is a quotation from Thomas Merton that speaks to me in these troubled times:
My father died in 2008. For several months I was able to put my grief on hold by focusing on the tasks of settling his affairs, selling his house, packing up (or giving away) his possessions. A lot of stuff ended up in our basement and as I attempted to winnow down the boxes of our stuff to make way for his, I discovered Dakota and I guess the time was right.
Norris describes the western town of Lemmon, Dakota as a landscape scoured out by the wind. Barren, harsh, unforgiving: she seemed to be describing my emotional landscape.
The effect of dryness on living tissue is in evidence all around us . . . In open country, far from any trees, the wind beats against you, a insistent as an ocean current. You tire from walking against it just as you would from swimming against an undertow.In the wake of my loss, I felt scoured out and utterly alone. I was terrified of the emptiness I now faced, a future without my father's wise and loving presence. He was always there, although toward the end he became less and less the father I knew. I'd watched him deteriorate into illness, anger, paranoia. I became his caretaker and he resented me. When I ran out of tasks, I could no longer put off reckoning with my grief.
Norris quotes St. Hilary, a fourth-century bishop: “Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.” She describes western Dakota as “a terrifying but beautiful landscape in which we are at the mercy of the unexpected.” Somehow this spoke to me, the idea that, when you are bereft of every comfort, you may recollect yourself -- she uses this monastic term, and it touched me profoundly. I found myself remembering my father's gentleness, his kindness and I saw how I could keep his presence with me by bringing this aspect of him into my interactions with others.
A friend of mine recently suffered a terrible loss. I sent him a copy of this book, and decided to reread it myself. I am not in the same place as I was ten years ago, and yet I still find comfort in Norris's words. Here is a quotation from Thomas Merton that speaks to me in these troubled times:
It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and my sister.
September 16, 2007
This book had some really cool bits and pieces about the spirituality and desolation found in the geography of South Dakota. However, i found those bits were wrapped in a thick layer of condescension and prejudicial judgement. I did not enjoy reading this book because I bristled at her tone so many times. She seemed to generalize about the people who made that space their home.
July 26, 2007
I came across this book while doing some research for work, and when I told my boss I was interested in reading it, she generously loaned me her copy. I've always had a bit of a love affair with the Dakotas -- the vast openness and the miles upon miles between towns speaks to both the recluse and the small-town girl in me. In this book, Kathleen Norris has collected her essays about Dakota (she lived in S. Dakota but repeatedly refers to both Dakotas as just "Dakota"). I could appreciate her insight as both an outsider -- she spent most of her childhood and young adulthood in Hawaii and New York City -- and as an insider -- her mom grew up in South Dakota and Kathleen's move to her mother's childhood home spurred the essays in this book. I think that Kathleen has the objectivity of an outsider balanced with the love and compassion of an insider, and her feelings about Dakota intersect with my own experience of being both an "outsider" and "insider" in a small plains' town. She manages to explore the simpleness, complexity, and frustration of rural life without ridiculing or romanticizing it, and she keeps these small towns from becoming completely invisible to the culture. Reading this filled me with longing for the Dakotas, nostalgia about the culture in which I grew up, and also a touch of relief that I don't live in such a small community anymore.
Many of these essays were published prior to this collection, so there are several places where Kathleen Norris seems to "repeat herself" if you read all the essays at once. I also struggled with her depiction of / fascination with monastic communities. She seems to carry her relationships with monastic life like a bit of a trophy, romanticizing it even as she criticizes others for romanticizing monasteries -- acknowledging the burden Benedictine monks take on by their Rule of Hospitality even as she seems keen to take advantage of that vow at every opportunity. But then, maybe I'm just jealous that she gets to hang out at monasteries and I don't.
Many of these essays were published prior to this collection, so there are several places where Kathleen Norris seems to "repeat herself" if you read all the essays at once. I also struggled with her depiction of / fascination with monastic communities. She seems to carry her relationships with monastic life like a bit of a trophy, romanticizing it even as she criticizes others for romanticizing monasteries -- acknowledging the burden Benedictine monks take on by their Rule of Hospitality even as she seems keen to take advantage of that vow at every opportunity. But then, maybe I'm just jealous that she gets to hang out at monasteries and I don't.
July 11, 2025
Kathleen Norris (b. 1947) is an American writer with ancestral roots in the Western Dakotas; her 1993 memoir Dakota details her decision in 1974 to move from city life to rural Lemmon, South Dakota to take over her grandparents' farm, and her experiences living in this at-times insular community and at-times harsh climate throughout her 30s and 40s (Of note, Norris left the Dakotas around 2000 to move to Hawaii, where she also had family and spent part of her formative years.)
This is a very unique, thoughtful memoir centered on place and the feelings places evoke, with the terrain, environment, spirituality and sociology of the Dakotas being portrayed as the main character and Norris as a secondary character. It seems that much of Norris' characterization of Dakotas life was seen through a spiritual lens, which may not resonate with all readers (it didn't really with me). I resonated more with the depictions of geography and climate, drawing from my personal experience of living not in the Dakotas but in many different regions of the US where I'm fascinated, from almost an outside observer/amateur anthropologist's perspective, by how place shapes perceptions and lives. As someone who doesn't really have strong geographical roots anywhere (partly by choice, partly by circumstances - my feelings on this are very mixed), the perspective of people who've lived in just one small community, where their ancestors also lived, and who have no intentions of leaving even temporarily to explore other opportunities, strikes me as both fascinating and claustrophobic:
My statistics:
Book 213 for 2025
Book 2139 cumulatively
This is a very unique, thoughtful memoir centered on place and the feelings places evoke, with the terrain, environment, spirituality and sociology of the Dakotas being portrayed as the main character and Norris as a secondary character. It seems that much of Norris' characterization of Dakotas life was seen through a spiritual lens, which may not resonate with all readers (it didn't really with me). I resonated more with the depictions of geography and climate, drawing from my personal experience of living not in the Dakotas but in many different regions of the US where I'm fascinated, from almost an outside observer/amateur anthropologist's perspective, by how place shapes perceptions and lives. As someone who doesn't really have strong geographical roots anywhere (partly by choice, partly by circumstances - my feelings on this are very mixed), the perspective of people who've lived in just one small community, where their ancestors also lived, and who have no intentions of leaving even temporarily to explore other opportunities, strikes me as both fascinating and claustrophobic:
A fourth generation Dakotan, a high school student, wrote recently in a school theme that his family had always been here, and would always remain. “Always” in this context is less than seventy-five years, and with a fragile economy and a falling population, chances are this young man will have to seek his livelihood elsewhere. Having been raised for a world that does not exist, he may, sitting in an apartment in Minneapolis, Denver, or Spokane, come to see the Dakota prairie as a lost Eden. Maybe by the fifth generation the family will produce a writer who can excavate the story.
My statistics:
Book 213 for 2025
Book 2139 cumulatively
November 1, 2008
I read this several years ago and am rereading it. I was born and raised a Catholic and have since fallen away from the Church. Norris, as a Protestant, made me look again at the faith of Catholicism versus the Church of Catholicism (two very different things). While she does not say this explicitly in this book, for non-Catholic readers, the Church is a centuries old corporation of power and politics. The faith is just that: faith. It is what doesn't get practiced by the Vatican which tries to enforce rules which cost it many former believers. This book is a beautiful examination of human existence with spirituality grounded in man-created religion and then the religion of land. I love the way she entwined her examination of being a oblate with the land of western South Dakota. A very spiritual land of immense power. For those who simply drive through the Dakotas on the interstate, it is something they will never see. One has to take two weeks and travel on the lesser known highways or find public marked land. Then camp out and walk--just walk for hours. It is anything but empty space. I think Norris is one of the very few contemporary writers who can write about religion and faith fluidly without dragging the reader down with thick and muddy sentences or dogma. This is especially true of her book, The Cloistered Walk.
July 24, 2014
Unlike the NY Times Book Review, I did not find this book "deeply moving". There were moments of clarity in her descriptions of extremes in weather and Hope church. But reading it was not enjoyable which is surprising since the author is (as she regularly points out) a poet. For instance, she uses monastic ("It's hard to say what monastic people mean to us"), monasticism ("My monasticism is an odd one"), and liturgy so often it was making me crazy. These clunky words conjure up little meaning for me and reading them over and over was annoying. As anyone who has visited that part of the country knows, the geography she inhabits and describes is powerful and interesting. I just don't think her writing did it justice.
October 27, 2012
This is frequent re-read of mine, just as any Kathleen Norris. One of the reasons for that is she is so inherently calming that I find myself returning to her contemplative and thoughtful writing time and again.
Dakota is the first of Norris' non-fiction spiritual books and is as much a reflection on the Great Plain as it is on Christian Benedictine contemplation. By marriage, I have become acquainted with the Prairies (further north and east than Norris in Manitoba which is, after all, long grass, not the short grass prairie that Norris describes). By reading Norris, I have become acquainted with Benedictine spirituality which has had a huge impact on how I see my marriage, my vocation and my life.
Norris' reflection on small town life and life in monastic communities are, in my view, essential for understanding how any community operates, dealing with everything from the holy use of gossip in small towns, resistance to change and to holy play in monasteries. There is much insight here and much which is followed up in her later books.
Dakota is the first of Norris' non-fiction spiritual books and is as much a reflection on the Great Plain as it is on Christian Benedictine contemplation. By marriage, I have become acquainted with the Prairies (further north and east than Norris in Manitoba which is, after all, long grass, not the short grass prairie that Norris describes). By reading Norris, I have become acquainted with Benedictine spirituality which has had a huge impact on how I see my marriage, my vocation and my life.
Norris' reflection on small town life and life in monastic communities are, in my view, essential for understanding how any community operates, dealing with everything from the holy use of gossip in small towns, resistance to change and to holy play in monasteries. There is much insight here and much which is followed up in her later books.
July 22, 2020
It took me awhile to read this book. It isn't the kind of book to read fast- it's almost like reading a lot of little books at once.
Kathleen Norris writes about the Great Plains - "Dakota" (she kind of throws both Dakotas together) and her experiences living there- and she interweaves this with her experiences of the monastic life- visiting monasteries, interacting with monks, readings of ancient monks. There are 44 chapters, or sections, and some of these are very short: some are weather reports. Or journal entries. Moments/memories she jotted down while not being able to sleep. Excerpts of poems.
It's refreshing to read this- I've never been to that part of the US- so reading about the extreme weather there, the deprivations, the hardships of farmers and ranchers was interesting and new to me. Norris draws a parallel between the farmers' experience and monk life. One of my favorite quotes was at the beginning of the book:
"I had stumbled onto a basic truth of asceticism: that it is not necessarily a denigration of the body, though it has often been misapplied for that purpose. Rather it is a way of surrendering to reduced circumstances in a manner that enhances the whole person."
There are Dakotan farmers who choose to remain there, despite the unpredictability of the rains and crop harvest. There are desert monks who choose to live a life in community with other monks, thereby giving up their freedom to choose other things, "learning to love what you find there... to care less for amenities than for that that which refreshes from a deeper source."
I love the idea of living simply. Of 'making do'. And so the parts where Norris describes this mentality delighted me!
I did sense a bit of negativity in this book, though. And it made me wonder how residents from the Dakotas would react to her characterizations of them. She talked at length of their wariness of outsiders, their reluctance to adopting new philosophies, or new ways of thinking. Their mistrust of professionals. Norris made Dakotans out to be kind of hostile, backwoods types who effectively keep out 'foreigners' .. it gave me pause to think of visiting that area!
I don't agree with all of Norris' views, but I enjoyed her writing and will look for more of her books to read.
Kathleen Norris writes about the Great Plains - "Dakota" (she kind of throws both Dakotas together) and her experiences living there- and she interweaves this with her experiences of the monastic life- visiting monasteries, interacting with monks, readings of ancient monks. There are 44 chapters, or sections, and some of these are very short: some are weather reports. Or journal entries. Moments/memories she jotted down while not being able to sleep. Excerpts of poems.
It's refreshing to read this- I've never been to that part of the US- so reading about the extreme weather there, the deprivations, the hardships of farmers and ranchers was interesting and new to me. Norris draws a parallel between the farmers' experience and monk life. One of my favorite quotes was at the beginning of the book:
"I had stumbled onto a basic truth of asceticism: that it is not necessarily a denigration of the body, though it has often been misapplied for that purpose. Rather it is a way of surrendering to reduced circumstances in a manner that enhances the whole person."
There are Dakotan farmers who choose to remain there, despite the unpredictability of the rains and crop harvest. There are desert monks who choose to live a life in community with other monks, thereby giving up their freedom to choose other things, "learning to love what you find there... to care less for amenities than for that that which refreshes from a deeper source."
I love the idea of living simply. Of 'making do'. And so the parts where Norris describes this mentality delighted me!
I did sense a bit of negativity in this book, though. And it made me wonder how residents from the Dakotas would react to her characterizations of them. She talked at length of their wariness of outsiders, their reluctance to adopting new philosophies, or new ways of thinking. Their mistrust of professionals. Norris made Dakotans out to be kind of hostile, backwoods types who effectively keep out 'foreigners' .. it gave me pause to think of visiting that area!
I don't agree with all of Norris' views, but I enjoyed her writing and will look for more of her books to read.
June 15, 2010
Ok, so I'm on a Kathleen Norris kick here. What can I say?
Kathleen Norris grew up in Hawaii, but went to South Dakota every summer to spend time with her grandparents. She went to college on the east coast, worked for awhile after graduation in New York City, but eventually moved with her husband (also a poet) to her maternal grandparents home in South Dakota to live.
A parallel story is Kathleen Norris growing up not really understanding or liking the God she was taught about in the Presbyterian church. In college and in her working years, she substituted poetry and words for religion. Words moved her. Words meant something to her. She loved them.
These two stories collide and mesh when she moves back to the Dakotas and lives in the house her mother grew up in. She moves into a small farming community where she is both outsider because she hasn't lived there her whole life, and also insider because her mother and grandparents are from there. A poet on the prairie, she discovers her family roots, and surprisingly also discovers that she loves the God of the Bible. Her love of words and poetry bring her to love the liturgy of ancient Christianity. She is able to live at a Benedictine monastery for 2 different periods of 9 months each. In these times, she comes to love the language of the Bible and the healing balm of singing the psalms. And loving the language of the Bible teaches her about the God of the Bible.
So this is an interesting book and I would recommend reading it. I enjoyed the layout she uses, because she intersperses her chapters with weather reports from different times of the year in her small town of Lemmon. Anyone who has lived on a farm or ranch understands how close you are to nature and to the skies when you earn your living from the land. These comments on the weather seem wonderful and happily grounded to me.
Kathleen Norris grew up in Hawaii, but went to South Dakota every summer to spend time with her grandparents. She went to college on the east coast, worked for awhile after graduation in New York City, but eventually moved with her husband (also a poet) to her maternal grandparents home in South Dakota to live.
A parallel story is Kathleen Norris growing up not really understanding or liking the God she was taught about in the Presbyterian church. In college and in her working years, she substituted poetry and words for religion. Words moved her. Words meant something to her. She loved them.
These two stories collide and mesh when she moves back to the Dakotas and lives in the house her mother grew up in. She moves into a small farming community where she is both outsider because she hasn't lived there her whole life, and also insider because her mother and grandparents are from there. A poet on the prairie, she discovers her family roots, and surprisingly also discovers that she loves the God of the Bible. Her love of words and poetry bring her to love the liturgy of ancient Christianity. She is able to live at a Benedictine monastery for 2 different periods of 9 months each. In these times, she comes to love the language of the Bible and the healing balm of singing the psalms. And loving the language of the Bible teaches her about the God of the Bible.
So this is an interesting book and I would recommend reading it. I enjoyed the layout she uses, because she intersperses her chapters with weather reports from different times of the year in her small town of Lemmon. Anyone who has lived on a farm or ranch understands how close you are to nature and to the skies when you earn your living from the land. These comments on the weather seem wonderful and happily grounded to me.
January 2, 2024
This is a beautiful memoir about place and faith and solitude. Norris writes compellingly about the way that place shapes her and has shaped the community she calls her own in the west Dakota plains, the place that in her words "is my spiritual geography, the place where I've wrestled my story out of the circumstances of landscape and inheritance" (2). In small ways, I resonated with her experience of moving to a place that looked different than where she left, though Indiana to Illinois is a much smaller contrast than NYC to the plains of western N/S Dakota. She writes about solitude and monasticism in such a way that invites the reader in, much in the same way Norris was invited into such spaces as an outsider as a Presbyterian poet. I loved this book and will go back to it in the future.
July 28, 2018
This is a collection of short pieces by an essayist and poet with a spiritual bent. I found many of these pieces rather parochial, so focused on the geographical and social atmosphere of the western plains of South Dakota that I had no finger hold by which to grip them. But others, with more overt spiritual explorations and connections to Benedictine monasticism were more accessible for me. These left me thinking and nodding, sometimes in agreement and sometimes in disagreement, but engaged.
February 22, 2020
Firstly, my Dh's grandmother was from Lemmon, South Dakota, so it was fun to see that locale play into this collection of essays on faith, the Dakotas, and writing. However, though Norris' family is also from Lemmon, she will always be an outsider and has an often uncomfortable viewpoint on those who are from the town. There were some good gems, but I have read other books of hers that I found more spiritually edifying.
November 24, 2012
This is the book that appeared at precisely the right moment in my life to convince me that moving to South Dakota was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I did. It was. Blue Cloud Abbey closed recently but the tranquility of the space is eternal.
February 15, 2009
This is a book of essays about the genius loci of Dakota, where the vast geography and midwestern sensibility give it a distinct identity. Norris tells it like it is when it comes to Dakota:
"By the time a town is seventy-five or one hundred years old, it may be filled with those who have come to idealize their isolation. Often these are people who never left at all, or fled back to the safety of the town after a try at college a few hundred miles from home, or returned after college regarding the values of the broader, more pluralistic world they had encountered as something to protect themselves and their families from. As their frame of reference diminishes, so do their aspirations and their ability to adapt to change. To some extent, wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom. The word's origins lie in the marketplace, as in 'exchange,' and negative connotations about like 'to shortchange' or deceive. But the sad truth is that the harder we resist change, and the more we resent anyone who demands change of us, the more we shortchange ourselves. Who could be more impoverished than a man who, on hearing news of a former teacher exclaimed in a tavern, 'That old cow? She used to make me read. Said I couldn't graduate till I read all she wanted. Well, I showed her; I haven't read a book since.'"
Not surprisingly, the town folk resented this book when it was published, accusing Norris of being "uppity" and "high and mighty."
"By the time a town is seventy-five or one hundred years old, it may be filled with those who have come to idealize their isolation. Often these are people who never left at all, or fled back to the safety of the town after a try at college a few hundred miles from home, or returned after college regarding the values of the broader, more pluralistic world they had encountered as something to protect themselves and their families from. As their frame of reference diminishes, so do their aspirations and their ability to adapt to change. To some extent, wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom. The word's origins lie in the marketplace, as in 'exchange,' and negative connotations about like 'to shortchange' or deceive. But the sad truth is that the harder we resist change, and the more we resent anyone who demands change of us, the more we shortchange ourselves. Who could be more impoverished than a man who, on hearing news of a former teacher exclaimed in a tavern, 'That old cow? She used to make me read. Said I couldn't graduate till I read all she wanted. Well, I showed her; I haven't read a book since.'"
Not surprisingly, the town folk resented this book when it was published, accusing Norris of being "uppity" and "high and mighty."
September 6, 2013
This is a wonderful book. Norris is a poet as well as a writer, and this shows in the prose, and the precision of the language she uses. As an adult, she returned to her family home in a small town in South Dakota and, through a series of essays and snapshots, she reveals the dynamics of life in an environment that is extreme in many ways: climate, isolation, history. She interweaves this with the related but dissimilar insights gained from the time she has spent at Benedictine monasteries in the Great Plains, and contrasts how the two societies, secular and sacred, cope with and respond to the world in which they are placed.
June 23, 2017
Poignant moments of reading throughout this memoir for me -- most often through Norris' descriptions of the landscape, movingly familiar and beautifully rendered for this girl who was raised on a North Dakota farm. I even recognized the people she depicts and often, to my hyper-sensitive reader's ears, seems to criticize. To be fair, her awarenesses of 'Dakota' (the western-most portions of South AND North Dakota) are much fresher than mine, given my departure from ND over 30 years ago. In all, the significance of geographical space to teach a spiritual lesson leaves a lasting mark. I'm so glad I read this one.
October 30, 2014
I have read other Kathleen Norriss' books which I enjoyed, this one was not the same...I tried to enjoy it but...
February 18, 2023
Precisely the kind of insight into living in one of the emptiest parts of the country I could hope to find. Beautiful writing, self-aware of space and distance, and grounded in community and spirit, as well as monastic life. Wish I read this years ago
March 11, 2018
Beautiful. Norris poignantly and comically captures the paradoxical pains and pleasures of life in western Dakota. But anyone living in the Midwest would benefit from this insightful meditation on Plains life. I was especially struck by her comparisons of Dakota and the monastery, a central theme of the book. Truly wonderful.
September 20, 2020
4.5 stars; as wise and beautiful as the Plains themselves.
August 27, 2022
Beautiful and thoughtful. I was recommended this book almost a decade ago and didn't get to it until now. I fully believe books come to you when they're ready. Adding this to my re-reads.
September 21, 2025
Actually give it 6 stars
October 9, 2009
In "Dakota," author Kathleen Norris captures accurately, affectionately and yet also brutally honestly, what it is like to live in the American plains/Canadian prairie region of North America. On the positive side, she addresses the stark beauty, vast unpopulated territory, recent frontier history, and interesting ethnic mix. On the negative side, she confronts the isolation (both geographic and psychological) and potential loneliness which follows from it, often prevalent provincial attitude, unfriendliness and even hostility shown to strangers, and severe climate.
Interwoven with all of this is Norris's spiritual journey. A sophisticated New Yorker with a rising writing career, she is surprised to find herself at home in a small Protestant church on the plains that is more conservative by far than she is. Her spirituality is not limited to things religious, however, and she grows into a winsome understanding of God that embraces her newfound place on the plains as much as it does her church. Plains and prairie people will appreciate and perhaps find a new perspective in the way in which her profound love of both place and God meet.
I found this book to be extremely helpful, especially since Norris's experience of moving from big-city New York to small-town South Dakota is mirrored by my own move two years ago, from Canada's largest city, Toronto, to small-town Saskatchewan. In addition, this book is a wonderful way to explore what it is like to live on or move to the plains and prairie regions, if you are a reader from another part of the world. At heart, though, this book helps anyone, anywhere, from any religious bent, to examine their own place and spiritual journey. And it's a treat to read.
Interwoven with all of this is Norris's spiritual journey. A sophisticated New Yorker with a rising writing career, she is surprised to find herself at home in a small Protestant church on the plains that is more conservative by far than she is. Her spirituality is not limited to things religious, however, and she grows into a winsome understanding of God that embraces her newfound place on the plains as much as it does her church. Plains and prairie people will appreciate and perhaps find a new perspective in the way in which her profound love of both place and God meet.
I found this book to be extremely helpful, especially since Norris's experience of moving from big-city New York to small-town South Dakota is mirrored by my own move two years ago, from Canada's largest city, Toronto, to small-town Saskatchewan. In addition, this book is a wonderful way to explore what it is like to live on or move to the plains and prairie regions, if you are a reader from another part of the world. At heart, though, this book helps anyone, anywhere, from any religious bent, to examine their own place and spiritual journey. And it's a treat to read.
July 12, 2018
It is always interesting to see how a book stands up to a re-reading. This book fared fairly well in that I think it is one of Norris's best written books. There is little narrative sequence in Norris's reflections, save the general story of moving from New York to South Dakota and through a process, South Dakota becomes home. Instead, what we have here is a series of poetic reflections on Dakota, on place, on the Benedictine monastery (Norris is an Oblate).
I found it interesting that many of Norris's main themes are expanded in her later writings. "The Cloistered Walk" focus on her experience with the Benedictines. "Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and 'Women's Work'" develops the theme of daily routine. Acedia & Me of course focuses on Acedia, but it draws together every theme that is in this book and represents a more mature reflection that is found here. It is also more honest and complete, in that Norris there shares more vulnerably about her marriage and the difficulties she had in Dakota. But there her prose plods and wanders. Dakota was first and artfully written. Norris gets deeper but this is perhaps one of her best artistically speaking.
What Norris attempts and succeeds at here is to enter into a place, see it appreciate it and tell the truth about it. She speaks lovingly about the state and the people she came to love, but she doesn't romanticize it either. I read with interest her reflections and never once felt like moving to Dakota.
I found it interesting that many of Norris's main themes are expanded in her later writings. "The Cloistered Walk" focus on her experience with the Benedictines. "Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and 'Women's Work'" develops the theme of daily routine. Acedia & Me of course focuses on Acedia, but it draws together every theme that is in this book and represents a more mature reflection that is found here. It is also more honest and complete, in that Norris there shares more vulnerably about her marriage and the difficulties she had in Dakota. But there her prose plods and wanders. Dakota was first and artfully written. Norris gets deeper but this is perhaps one of her best artistically speaking.
What Norris attempts and succeeds at here is to enter into a place, see it appreciate it and tell the truth about it. She speaks lovingly about the state and the people she came to love, but she doesn't romanticize it either. I read with interest her reflections and never once felt like moving to Dakota.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 463 reviews