Roofwalker

by Mona Susan Power

In a collection by the author of The Grass Dancer , a Sioux spirit travels the night sky in search of good dreams that are rendered true when he consumes them, from a Sioux elder's hope to return to her prairie home to a Harvard student's reevaluation of the learning process. Roofwalker , made up of a unique combination of fiction and nonfiction, or "stories" and "histories," reveals the ways that native traditions and beliefs work in the lives of characters who live far from the reservation—and in the author’s own life. Many of the "histories" repeat subjects and themes found in the "stories," making Roofwalker a book in which spirits and the living commingle and Sioux culture and modern life collide with disarming power, humor, and joy. The first seven pieces in the book are "stories," fictional accounts primarily of girls and women. In the title story, a young girl believes in the power of the "roofwalker" spirit to make her dreams come true. In "Beaded Souls," a woman is cursed by the sin of her great-grandfather, an Indian policeman who arrested Sitting Bull. "First Fruits" follows a native girl’s first-year at Harvard. The nonfiction pieces include Power’s imaginary account of the meeting of her Phi Beta Kappa father and Sioux mother, a piece about the letters of an Irish ancestor and another in which Power and her mother visit the Field Museum in Chicago, where a native ancestor’s dress is on display.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Native American, Realistic Fiction, Essays, Anthologies, Indigenous

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2002

About the author

Susan Power, now publishing under the name "Mona Susan Power," is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakhóta). She was born and raised in Chicago. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School. She decided to become a writer, starting her career by earning an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Her fellowships include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship, and Native Arts & Cultures Foundation Fellowship.
She resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Her newest novel is A Council of Dolls (forthcoming in August 2023 from Mariner/HarperCollins).

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Power is a special writer. Roofwalker collects seven of her short stories and five of her histories, all circling Chicago. The short stories explore how Native Americans have adapted to Anglo-European America, both in the past and the present. It's hard for me to pick favorites here. You have stories about the mythic roofwalker that eats dreams, stories of love and betrayal and death, a story about a man who finds a talking saint statue in a thrift store, another about a college student that finds unexpected friendships. They're all really lovely, sweet and sad (but not bittersweet in any way, there's no bitterness here, it seems to me).

The histories shed light on where Power as a writer comes from. In Museum Indian, she explores how it feels to have your family's history taken and put on display without permission. It made me think more deeply about my own museum experiences. Mostly, she explores how her mother gave her a voice to tell stories, and how her father circled their lives, and gave her a different kind of ancestry.

Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys short stories, magical realism, and Native American history. Also check out The Grass Dancer and Sacred Wilderness, her two novels.

[Jalilah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, sad and moving stories from a talented author.

[Abby]

Wow, finally finished this one after it was on hold for almost a year. I am definitely a fan of Susan Power--particularly her fiction, although I love how her histories and her inventions are so closely bound together in this volume. That seems like the most honest move a writer can make. You can't really ever separate your life experiences from your imagined ones.

Favorite story has to be Angry Fish. So much love for that story that it seems a disservice to the writing to explain why I like it: you must read it and let Susan Power explain it to you.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. I mean every single story and essay. My only question is why didn't I read this sooner?

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, devastating, and lovely again. A beautiful collection of stories and histories that breaks open the hearts of each individual. A worthwhile and powerful read!

[Sydney W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful prose that inspired much introspection. Every short story inspired thought of a different part of myself and the world around me, which was really wonderful! My favorite stories were Angry Fish and First Fruits, with First Fruits being especially fun to read as a current university student :)

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book while searching for the authors award winning book The Grass Dancer, which I still have to read. After sampling her writing, I would read ANYTHING this author writes! Roofwalker is a collection of short stories centering on Native American culture, mainly about women and children. The stories at the end are non-fiction I believe, some memories, some story telling in how the author came to grow up in Chicago. Exceptional writing and story telling.

[An nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

They keep making books that are hard to read! But not this one!! Each story was full of tender feeling, and wrapped in storytelling tradition (I loved the autobiographical half) ~~ with such a Midwestern sense of place: these sorts of things always feel real real real to me

Book that is very full of love

[Karalee James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very touching

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

For book club. Wonderful

[Anya Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of indigenous short stories. I still think about this book weeks after I’ve finished it.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so bad at reviewing short story collections. I thought these were generally good and interesting, although I mostly found myself wishing we could stay with any of these characters for a full-formed work. Can't really knock a short story collection for being a short story collection, but I think the pieces in here are beautifully written but don't necessarily benefit from format in the way some of my very favorite short fiction does. Man if Power isn't a fantastic author though--beautiful imagery, really great storytelling techniques, the kind of brevity where she doesn't overwrite. This made me excited to read a full-length work of hers.

[Sam Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the connection between the various short stories.

[Susan Baranek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Susan Power’s novel The Grass Dancer which was published in 1994 and won the PEN/Hemingway prize for first novel, but I hadn’t followed her, hadn’t thought about her in years. She seemed (to me) to have disappeared from the literary scene after that well received debut. I didn’t know about a second novel, Sacred Wilderness, that was published in 2014 by Michigan State University Press or this slim book of short stories and essays put out by an independent, non-profit publisher in 2002. I have Dan to thank for bringing this one to my attention.

This book consists of seven short stories and five essays (referred to as ‘histories’). Power, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe was born and raised in Chicago and surely draws from experience. Most of the stories are set in Chicago and her characters are Native American. Like Tommy Orange’s excellent debut, There There, Power's stories are about Urban Native Americans. Hoever, Power’s lovely prose is more akin to Louise Erhdrich’s than Orange’s. The questions of identity are ones they both share - the struggle to integrate into a modern world without losing one’s sense of history and heritage. One story, First Fruits, set at Harvard (Power is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law school) is particularly good in addressing the issues of balancing two separate worlds and was one of my favorites.

The essays, which are autobiographical in nature, are excellent. They could easily be mistaken for short stories had Power not separated them as ‘Histories’. I actually liked the five short pieces better than the fictional pieces and I think Power might have an excellent memoir inside her that she should explore.

As I wrote earlier, I wouldn't have known about this book were it not for Dan. He was kind enough to bring it back as a gift from his visit to Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark Books.

Dan, chi-miigwech!

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a short book of short stories, this volume packs a punch. There are some gorgeously imagined narratives in this text - my favorite being that of the Winnebago man who finds a live St Jude statue in his girlfriend's thrift store, and who teaches him Lakota while writing down the saint's poetry. It's an almost fond critique of the church, funny while making a dozen points about the hierarchy of Catholicism and the bureaucracy of priests, and I love the idea of St Jude growing fat and content on the smell of soup (but not eating any, because he doesn't need earthly sustenance). "First Fruits" is a fantastic story of a young Indian woman going to Harvard, and discovering the spirits of other Indians there, the first who graduated from the Indian College, built in 1655. The text weaves back and forth between different Indian communities, past and present, time bending and circling and bending again, all through the written word - through the English the first graduate tries to throw back; through the English paper George writes about the spirits that walk campus; through the postcard her father sends of Mount Rushmore. I love that it's a world that can expand and show more of itself, rather than contract and trap, as is the lot of so many of the protagonists in the early stories in this book. Yet even those are beautiful, especially the unnamed narrator who tells the story of her last weeks in a nursing home before the rolling prairies welcome her back, and she is young again, a child who speaks only Dakota.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of short stories and memories is a treasure, the kind of magic portal into unfamiliar places, people, and ways of thinking that makes story telling an art. The language and images are powerful and beautiful, one right on the heels of the next. They pop into mu moind on the bbs and haunt my dreams. Yet the language does not call attention to itself in a way the distracts from the stories. I love the way the worlds of the living and the dead touch and blur, and the easy juxtaposition of the every day and the mystical. I particularly enjoy the deeper sense the book gives of growing up Sioux on the Dakota Reservations and in Chicago, And several of the characters feel like real people I'd love to share a meal and a walk with. For me this book was a perfect match, one that goes on my favorites list and hopefully on my shelff to keep someday.

[Kyle Aisteach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of stories and essays, this really is as much a window into Power's world as it is a piece of literature. The pieces themselves are more in the literary mode than mainstream, and so I suspect most readers will find the pacing a bit slow, but I found it quite engaging. Several of the stories were quite moving, and I was especially fond of the one called "Angry Fish." This is worth reading if you're interested in Native American literature or if you're curious what the MFA set is reading these days.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book read for the 2012-2013 Loft Mentorship series. We discussed it this morning, and it was a rich, textured discussion, which is in line with my feelings about this sequence of stories. There's something savory and perfect about Power's storytelling, the way she unveils certain information, knowing when to allude and when to give a scene full glory. Read it first as a library book, but I'll be buying my own copy, so I can re-read and mark up, and I am so grateful we'll be working with her this year in mentorship.

[Andrea Stoeckel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book that in some ways weaves stories and history together, much as a sweetgrass or tobacco braid is formed. The history gives the foundation on which the stories reflect them.

A quick read of 200 pages, it will sit with you for a lot longer than it tajes you to read it. It's not available through B+N and has a publihing date of 2002. Please, try to find this sparkling jewel

[Katie M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really nice collection of stories about a range of contemporary Native American characters. As other reviewers have mentioned, the St. Jude story and the Harvard one are standouts. The pacing was a little uneven, but that's pretty much how I always feel about short story collections, so any collection that doesn't leave me grumpy and unsatisfied at the end is generally a winner in my world.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

short stories based on American Indian heritage; really very well written; I was glad that the WHOLE thing was not one story; generally I am not a fan of short stories: in this case it worked; 2002 Milkweed Selection, (finally) read ‘2015; purchased hardback via Robie Books, Berea, KY; 199 pgs.; 3 out of 5 stars; read Dec. 11, 2015/#46

[Karlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author of THE GRASS DANCER has not published many books since then that I can find. This collection of short stories by Power, a Harvard graduate and a lawyer, is moving and engaging. She is a Sioux who portrays contemporary and historic Dakotas and others very well. I hope she is working on another wonderful novel instead of being a busy lawyer.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories that focus on the blending of Native American culture within White American society. The stories primarily focus on young women but my favorite was an older man's encounter with a talking saint statue which raises questions about the relationship between Native Americans, their religions, and Christianity. Interesting read.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Power writes with beauty and finesse about the Native American experience. This book is a collection of short stories. They take place mostly in the present day and reflect her Sioux heritage.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very powerful short stories about the interplay and tension for Native Americans between traditional life and life in the city. My favorite stories were "Angry Fish" and "Museum Indians".

[Teleseparatist · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the "Histories" more than the "Stories" and the four stars are primarily for the second section.

[scherzo♫ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cover art: Migrations by Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Power is a fabulous writer. I loved her novel and really enjoyed her story collection. Recommended for anyone interested in contemporary NA culture.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent stories. And I loved the histories.