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Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles
Tells the story of a group of tribal pilgrims who journey south toward freedom after the government invades their reservation to claim their sacred trees fuel.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
10 people are currently reading
834 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Vizenor
79 books88 followersGerald Robert Vizenor is an Anishinaabe writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
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September 11, 2008The first thing that came to mind was an American Indian William S. Burroughs. There's also a sort of Tom Robbins sense of humor, without any of that Tom Robbins shittiness. Occupying a ground of simultaneous oral tradition, bizarro futurism, and sex comedy, Vizenor manages to weave together a great number of unexpected elements into a very funny, very weird whole.
November 10, 2010
This is one of the most profoundly weird and disturbing books I've ever read. And absolutely brilliant. It's hard to describe the plot. It's a post-apocalyptic journey undertaken by a group of American Indians in which they encounter horrors like cannibals in Oklahoma, deadly gamblers, and hordes of mutilated people. Read this! But not while eating. Or when someone is looking over your shoulder.
October 6, 2008
Wow, this was probably the most violent book I've ever read. That didn't matter so much as it's beauty, i guess I'll call it. It has a chant-like quality, rhythm, something like that which is spell-binding. It made me want to go to all the places in the book and learn something about shamanism. there's ritual, and magic, and bears! Its representations of sex and sexuality are complicated and interesting.
It's a shame, I think, that this book's classification under the category 'American Indian' or some other such limiter keeps it from being read in the general 'literature' classes...
It's a shame, I think, that this book's classification under the category 'American Indian' or some other such limiter keeps it from being read in the general 'literature' classes...
December 11, 2025
Wow, this is a looooot to take in. Real theorizing-in-the-act-of-storytelling stuff going on here. Reading it made me think to Charles Johnson's Middle Passage, another novel that waded into the waters of postmodernism with ethnic questions of authorship in mind. Here, Vizenor is writing from a 'mixedblood' (i.e. to be of tribal and non-tribal heritage) perspective to interrogate Indigenous identity and its reflection in the arts. This novel is contextualized by the American Indian Movement as well as the proliferation of published Indigenous writing that would emerge in the wake of Momaday's House Made of Dawn. Remixing Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as well as the mythology of manifest destiny, Vizenor's novel narrates a trip of mixedblood 'pilgrims' making their way southwest through the United States as the nation falls into disarray with oil stocks being depleted. Along the way, our large party of characters run into religious authorities, federal agents, gamblers, and more. Its a very difficult narrative to describe, but the most consistent theme concerned language and a proliferation of 'word wars' with various parties being invested in their own understanding of "Indianness."
Vizenor's writing provokes the reader to question their investments in the idea of the Indian as an invented figure in American culture. There is a clear effort to critique governmental constructions of Indianness as well as circulated stereotypical images by Indigenous authors contemporary to the text's publication. With this being said, our author is at least as humorous as he is vitriolic, which really rewards the reading process. While its hard to single out a favorite chapter (or rather vignette), I quite enjoyed the pilgrims' visit to a 'word hospital,' where language was continuously tinkered with, in search of sentences that could produce a singular affective response/interpretation of meaning. I think this is what Vizenor has in mind with his notion of 'terminal creeds,' or cultural identity belief systems that close off a proliferation of subjectivities. In other words, a language of the living dead. Exciting, frightening, and confounding in equal measure.
Vizenor's writing provokes the reader to question their investments in the idea of the Indian as an invented figure in American culture. There is a clear effort to critique governmental constructions of Indianness as well as circulated stereotypical images by Indigenous authors contemporary to the text's publication. With this being said, our author is at least as humorous as he is vitriolic, which really rewards the reading process. While its hard to single out a favorite chapter (or rather vignette), I quite enjoyed the pilgrims' visit to a 'word hospital,' where language was continuously tinkered with, in search of sentences that could produce a singular affective response/interpretation of meaning. I think this is what Vizenor has in mind with his notion of 'terminal creeds,' or cultural identity belief systems that close off a proliferation of subjectivities. In other words, a language of the living dead. Exciting, frightening, and confounding in equal measure.
September 12, 2012
I'd give Bearheart a 3.5, maybe, if Goodreads enabled half-stars. Vizenor sets out to upset just about everyone he can with this novel-- he refuses to gussy up the sex, the violence is graphic and unusually cruel, and his language laughs at your attempts to decipher his meaning. His words and concepts can't be pinned down-- to define them would be a sort of terminal creed.
This is a post-apocalyptic, on-the-road, pilgrimage novel with magic realism and a dash of the surreal. If you can bear through whatever it is that you find the most uncomfortable-- for me it was a scene where a woman has sex with her two boxer dogs and another involving the pulling out of someone's eyeballs-- and if you can see why Vizenor wants you uncomfortable, this novel becomes incredibly rewarding. Vizenor challenges the very concept of "Indian," plays with trickster figures, and speculates on what would happen to humanity and whiteculture (all one word, mind you) if suddenly, we ran out of gasoline. I would say it holds the trophy as one of the most bizarre things I've ever read while, at the same time, it makes a great deal of sense.
Proude Cedarfaire, when speaking to the government officials sent to kick him out the cedar woods in which his family has lived for at least four generation, says "I will not listen to you speaking as an institution... When you speak as individuals in the language of your dreams I will listen [...]".
Bearheart speaks to readers in the language of Vizenor's dreams.
This is a post-apocalyptic, on-the-road, pilgrimage novel with magic realism and a dash of the surreal. If you can bear through whatever it is that you find the most uncomfortable-- for me it was a scene where a woman has sex with her two boxer dogs and another involving the pulling out of someone's eyeballs-- and if you can see why Vizenor wants you uncomfortable, this novel becomes incredibly rewarding. Vizenor challenges the very concept of "Indian," plays with trickster figures, and speculates on what would happen to humanity and whiteculture (all one word, mind you) if suddenly, we ran out of gasoline. I would say it holds the trophy as one of the most bizarre things I've ever read while, at the same time, it makes a great deal of sense.
Proude Cedarfaire, when speaking to the government officials sent to kick him out the cedar woods in which his family has lived for at least four generation, says "I will not listen to you speaking as an institution... When you speak as individuals in the language of your dreams I will listen [...]".
Bearheart speaks to readers in the language of Vizenor's dreams.
March 26, 2015
Wow, what to say about this book. It's going to take me a long time to digest this. As many others have said, reading this was certainly not an experience I would call enjoyable, in fact I found it deeply disturbing and it even made me feel physically ill in several parts. It is also a challenging read not just on the level of content but also style (although if you're able to let go of the need for the words to always make sense, the rhythmic and often hypnotic quality of Vizenor's use of of language, the way it conveys something so strongly while also seemingly defying efforts at sense-making can be quite amazing). But since I'm not always so good at turning off (or at least suspending) my sense-making faculties (and the densely packed symbolism within the book also makes it seem as though you might "miss something" as soon as you let go a little) it took me a lot longer to read this than a book of this length probably should. I'm almost tempted to rate this two stars because of the way goodreads classifies the star system as rating of how much you "liked" the book. I didn't like this book. It was awful. That said, I think the way the book manages to address very academic/intellectual arguments (especially regarding the nature and implications of language and its usage) and political issues (especially identity politics) in really challenging ways while also eliciting the sort of visceral reactions described by so many in their reviews make it something very unique, important, and worthwhile reading. Just don't expect it to be easy going.
April 9, 2008
This book is seriously fucked up. For me, Bearheart belongs in the same category as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: I can see why it's interesting intellectually, but it made me feel sick while reading it and I never want to read it again.
Vizenor thoroughly challenges conceptions of gender, sexuality, humanity, Indian-ness, and lots more in this novel. In the afterword to the book, Louis Owens writes about his experiences teaching the book, saying, "Since being hauled on the carpet for teaching Bearheart, I have been sure to include the novel in every Native American literature course I teach. It is a brilliant, evocative, essential corrective to all false and externally imposed definitions of 'Indian.' It challenges all of us, and, like all trickster tales, it wakes us up" (248). Despite my disgust while reading Bearheart, it certainly is valuable in this way.
Having acknowledged that, though, if you are disturbed by violence, rape, frequent explicit sexual acts (many of which of a . . . shall we say . . . nonstandard persuasion, and just general weirdness, this is not the book for you.
Vizenor thoroughly challenges conceptions of gender, sexuality, humanity, Indian-ness, and lots more in this novel. In the afterword to the book, Louis Owens writes about his experiences teaching the book, saying, "Since being hauled on the carpet for teaching Bearheart, I have been sure to include the novel in every Native American literature course I teach. It is a brilliant, evocative, essential corrective to all false and externally imposed definitions of 'Indian.' It challenges all of us, and, like all trickster tales, it wakes us up" (248). Despite my disgust while reading Bearheart, it certainly is valuable in this way.
Having acknowledged that, though, if you are disturbed by violence, rape, frequent explicit sexual acts (many of which of a . . . shall we say . . . nonstandard persuasion, and just general weirdness, this is not the book for you.
November 23, 2018
This book is insane. Think Cormac McCarthy plus Louise Erdrich. A post apocalyptic journey with plenty of violence, sex, and interesting encounters. McCarthy’s The Road is similar in structure. The Native Americans travel together through a world ravaged by apocalypse encountering quite a few crazy characters along the way. Don’t read this if you can’t handle weird sex and extreme violence.
July 6, 2022
Bizarre, violent, and uncomfortable, but in a way that I think myths really are. A lot of parallels to today, which is sad considering this is a post apocalyptic book but I suppose that's the point. Glad I read it.
April 11, 2024
I really didn't like this novel, but maybe it just isn't for me. And that's okay.
March 24, 2021
⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 3.5 stars
“We become our memories and what we believe. We become the terminal creeds we speak. Our words limit the animals we would become... we are all incomplete... imperfect. Lost limbs and lost visions stand with the same phantoms.”
This gruesome, dark book grapples with complex themes like Native American identity (and what people invent it to be), consumption and preservation, animal vs human, creed vs spirit, and both the flexibility and rigidness of words and language.
This story brought to mind similarities from sources such as Pilgrim’s Progress and Canterbury Tales, while also tapping into a post apocalyptic, dystopian world that stories like The Road & Death Stranding (yes a video game) embody.
If you’re prepared for the graphic detail and upsetting nature of this profound and moving book, it can teach you and challenge you immensely.
“We become our memories and what we believe. We become the terminal creeds we speak. Our words limit the animals we would become... we are all incomplete... imperfect. Lost limbs and lost visions stand with the same phantoms.”
This gruesome, dark book grapples with complex themes like Native American identity (and what people invent it to be), consumption and preservation, animal vs human, creed vs spirit, and both the flexibility and rigidness of words and language.
This story brought to mind similarities from sources such as Pilgrim’s Progress and Canterbury Tales, while also tapping into a post apocalyptic, dystopian world that stories like The Road & Death Stranding (yes a video game) embody.
If you’re prepared for the graphic detail and upsetting nature of this profound and moving book, it can teach you and challenge you immensely.
December 5, 2022
Where to start….I am not the target audience for this book, but I really tried. I almost threw up a few times during the reading. I couldn’t get past the women being demeaned, including by the heroes.
I would like to read more Native American literature, but this was not the avenue for me.
I have read some of the reviews, and the afterward in the book itself, so I think I understand more about what happened. It’s a classic road trip/Canterbury Tales story with weird and dangerous characters to meet along the way. The dystopian genre that is too common IMO was more original at the time of “Bearheart”’s publication. The violence was not entirely gratuitous; many of the sexual scenes were, including sexual assault. The ending made sense given the context. Were the surviving pilgrims better off than at the start?
I have no clue, but I am not better for having read this.
I would like to read more Native American literature, but this was not the avenue for me.
I have read some of the reviews, and the afterward in the book itself, so I think I understand more about what happened. It’s a classic road trip/Canterbury Tales story with weird and dangerous characters to meet along the way. The dystopian genre that is too common IMO was more original at the time of “Bearheart”’s publication. The violence was not entirely gratuitous; many of the sexual scenes were, including sexual assault. The ending made sense given the context. Were the surviving pilgrims better off than at the start?
I have no clue, but I am not better for having read this.
September 16, 2024
3.5*
In a post apocalyptic USA where the federal government has failed and the country has run out of oil, a group of Native American pilgrims travels from Minnesota to New Mexico.
A kind of updated Canterbury Tales as if told by Tom Robbins, Hunter S Thompson, and /or Kurt Vonnegut. Goodreads has list published in 1990, but the initial printing was a small run in 1978. This feels more in line with the tone, late 60's or 70's.
This book plays with the Trickster character of many different Native American stories. It also asks what it means to be Indian and deconstructs many of the ideas others have put on the people of those communities... From colonizers, to governments, to Hollywood, to tribal councils.
This book also has a lot of violence, crazy sexual situations, and tons of humor.
In a post apocalyptic USA where the federal government has failed and the country has run out of oil, a group of Native American pilgrims travels from Minnesota to New Mexico.
A kind of updated Canterbury Tales as if told by Tom Robbins, Hunter S Thompson, and /or Kurt Vonnegut. Goodreads has list published in 1990, but the initial printing was a small run in 1978. This feels more in line with the tone, late 60's or 70's.
This book plays with the Trickster character of many different Native American stories. It also asks what it means to be Indian and deconstructs many of the ideas others have put on the people of those communities... From colonizers, to governments, to Hollywood, to tribal councils.
This book also has a lot of violence, crazy sexual situations, and tons of humor.
August 26, 2022
"Oral traditions were honored. Families welcomed good tellers of stories, the wandering historians of follies and tragedies. Readers and writers were seldom praised but the traveling raconteurs were one form of the new shamans on the interstates. Facts and the need for facts had died with newspapers and politics. Non-facts were more believable. The listeners traveled with the tellers to the same frames of time and place. The telling was in the listening. When the sun had set travelers and moths were drawn to the flames. Stories were told about fools and tricksters and human animals. Myths became the center of meaning again."
January 30, 2021
Reads like the author had an overarching theme in mind and instead of actually writing it coherently decided to create each sentence with a random word generator, and then for good measure add in the most unlikable and stagnant characters in the English language. Every character seems like a copy of the next: each revolving around either having sex, talking to birds, yelling about birds, swimming in rivers, or cursing white people. And no, this book is *nothing* like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."
November 9, 2021
This review may be a little backwards because I want to compare it to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road—which was written after Bearheart… but The Road is like Bearheart but devoid of beautiful trickster joy and ecstatic dream wandering. Read Bearheart for a fresh take on post-apocalyptic, white people will devolve into cannibalism after three days without fast food, genre that was written 40 years ago and still feels excitingly new.
September 5, 2018
Quite an experience to read this fictional narrative that was quite ahead of its time in anticipating what we're living today and tomorrow.
Chapters are both short and sprawling such that they send the reader off kilter but on to a proper kilter.
Chapters are both short and sprawling such that they send the reader off kilter but on to a proper kilter.
December 5, 2018
I read this for a 1970s American lit class and I love this book?? Like, it is so tricky and there's something new to think about. But don't pin anything down, because otherwise you're missing the point. I kind of love postmodern lit?
July 11, 2020
a trickster tale
one that defies genres and continually flips
It felt like a book where you could read it over and over and get new things and each time miss things.
definitely not for the easily offended or faint of heart - or perhaps that is exactly who it is for.
one that defies genres and continually flips
It felt like a book where you could read it over and over and get new things and each time miss things.
definitely not for the easily offended or faint of heart - or perhaps that is exactly who it is for.
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August 22, 2023Weird, wild, and very interesting - I think I personally would've enjoyed it more if it were a little more grounded and a little less trippy and gonzo, but I also think Vizenor knew what he was doing and wrote just the book he wanted to write.
August 5, 2018
Proactive, brilliant, problematic.
June 15, 2019
Rewarding
July 16, 2021
3.5. This was a weird one.
November 26, 2022
Indigenous spiritual dystopia.
December 23, 2022
I loved being lost and captivated at the same time, though occasionally it was overwhelming.
November 7, 2023
by no means is this a bad book but i really did not like it
May 2, 2024
i wish i could give it 0 stars
February 14, 2008
HaHahaa,I think I'd like this CRAZY Old Coyote!
Finished this tonight, as of this morning i still wasn't sure if i actually liked this Book, i was thinking I did not?Couldn't figure out my own reactions to it? He intrigued and annoyed me fully. He played with time and space and place in a way that made my head spin. Taking things from history and dropping them in the wrong part of the country then mixing in a little fiction to spice things up a bit ... or maybe that was the sex or glowing dog? He retained true myths and attacked myths we accept as true. And like all good little crows he picked up things he found laying around here and there and nowhere ... or was that somewhere? Bears he found in the mountains, pueblos he found in other authors heads, Instead of shiny objects he found/creates (since he understands time, there is no way saying it in past tense.(u better not need an explanation of that.)) Colorful characters that shine. Weather or not you like them they each offer you a perspective to view from new angles. Reminds me of folks I've known (Vizenor) That have journeyed/meditated... to long? ... to far?... to something? with or without(not needed!) the help of spirited herbs like ayahuasca or peyote and never fully come back. Or rather became a little bit more of all that is so there is no way to come back when you haven't gone anyplace, just became.I bet his eyes Shine !
I guess all i can say is ???
CRAZY
WEIRD
SAD
DIZZYING
DAZZLING
PUKEY
DISTURBING
FUNNY
HEARTENING
...i am not sure???
all and all enjoyably tortuously interesting.
Thanks N.!
I might steal more of your books!
: )
*I'd might read his other books
just to see if some of the interesting obsessions are continued/carried through into his other works?
********************************************************
So far ?
in a word?
Weird.
Good though, Lot's of great parts that hit home.
A paragraph here and there
that Zing you with there wording.
I'm not half way through yet but he seems to
set up so many contradictions, separations?
Like a child playing with two colors of clay,
they start off separate.
Yellow and green.
Then get mixed and squished all together
Into a swirly little ball, lots of swirly folks in this book!
then the child sits there and tries to pick the colors back out.
tries to recreate "pure" colors?
but how can it be done?
It's all mixed up, It's all clay?
Isn't yellow liable to turn green eventually anyway?
Isn't green part yellow? What's up?
Seems He's trying to retain purity with the main character,
In a world that's dying and so inturn obsessed with sex
... of any kind ?
There was one part early in the book
when the old man is sittin' with another visiting.
The visitor tells how his father died
angry in a sky rise, in the city, in an "old age" home
Angry at losing his place on the res.
and hating the ones that forced him off.
The main character asks
"was he possessed by Evil?"
"No" the visitor replies confused.
"Then was his hatred in good humor,trickery?"
I think the visitor remained confused?
But i like that.
I like that he was able to retain a lot of the thinking
and beliefs of the people he's writing about, so far in the book.
A lot of the old stories are enmeshed into his stories.
It will be interesting to see where he is going with this?
I can't tell his goals yet?
What is he trying to portray?
It's a weird mishmash
That I am enjoying in a perplexed sort of way : )
Thanks!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2009
Though probably not like anything you have ever read before, this doesn't quite live up to Vizenor's later novels. Being his first work of long fiction it seemed he had yet to perfect his methodologies. His signature truncated syntax is not on display so his word light fails to glow as bright as it could. He also comes dangerously close to betraying his own ideology: all the whites are bad, all the Natives are victims in one way or another, and the stone-faced, quiet, wise, "Proude," can-do-no-wrong "main character" (if there is such a thing in a work as deconstructed as this) comes dangerously comes to a stereotype Vizenor is feverishly trying to explode. I have a feeling other people said same thing to St. Gerald upon Bearheart's initial publication. He listened and made sure he never made the same mistakes again.
These minor criticisms aside, if you are looking for a dystopian, surrealist, myth-o-mare across a gasolineless 28 Days Later America (penned thirty years before McCarthy decided to write The Road)look no further.
I'm not ashamed to say I don't comprehend everything that occurs symbolically or otherwise in this book. I do have an intuition all the characters are manifestations of Rosina and Proude, all different aspects of their experience during one year. It's the cycle of the seasons, but also an east to west journey of the sun. The pinnacle is at What Cheer via the show down with Cecil Staples. Before this the number of pilgrims is growing and the chance events fortuitous. After this incident, the number of pilgrims decreases usually via violent death. Time begins to go backwards. We start where we begin: the morning in the light of Sister Eternal Flame with the bears ha ha haaaaaaing in the four directions.
Reminded me a lot of Dhalgren actually.
These minor criticisms aside, if you are looking for a dystopian, surrealist, myth-o-mare across a gasolineless 28 Days Later America (penned thirty years before McCarthy decided to write The Road)look no further.
I'm not ashamed to say I don't comprehend everything that occurs symbolically or otherwise in this book. I do have an intuition all the characters are manifestations of Rosina and Proude, all different aspects of their experience during one year. It's the cycle of the seasons, but also an east to west journey of the sun. The pinnacle is at What Cheer via the show down with Cecil Staples. Before this the number of pilgrims is growing and the chance events fortuitous. After this incident, the number of pilgrims decreases usually via violent death. Time begins to go backwards. We start where we begin: the morning in the light of Sister Eternal Flame with the bears ha ha haaaaaaing in the four directions.
Reminded me a lot of Dhalgren actually.
May 8, 2009
Boy this was twisted. It has been a long time since I've read a novel that included anything like boxer fucking, death by sugar cookies, and cedar-tree-based mysticism all in one story. Bring it on, Vizenor!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews