xSubs Reading Room discussion

Post any suggestions for our November group read. We'll leave this up for a week and then get a poll going!

There was one suggestion that we try to focus on indigenous authors this month as in the States, later this month, we'll turn our attention to Thanksgiving and the ways in which in marks atrocities committed against indigenous people. I love this idea, but feel free to suggest anything else as well.

Here are some recommendations by Indigenous authors that have been suggested to me!

The Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. YA Fiction

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team.

Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims.

Now, as the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.


The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Fiction

Braiding Sweetgrass

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Adult Fiction.

Based on events from the life of Erdrich's grandfather, The Night Watchman is about tribal chairman Thomas Wazhashk's efforts to fight against the push for Indian termination in 1953, which would have ignored prior U.S.-Native American treaties and resulted in the dispossession of Native American lands.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Nonfiction.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

In all clarity. This is my favorite book I’ve read this year. It’s amazing and if we don’t select it I highly recommend you read it.

There There by Tommy Orange Fiction

Tommy Orange’s “groundbreaking, extraordinary” ( The New York Times) There There is the “brilliant, propulsive” ( People Magazine) story of twelve unforgettable characters, Urban Indians living in Oakland, California, who converge and collide on one fateful day. It’s “the year’s most galvanizing debut novel” ( Entertainment Weekly).

As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow—some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent—momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and loss.

Dunno if we’d be doing graphic novels, but for those who are unfamiliar I’d suggest The Adventure Zone book 1: here there be gerblins. It’s dumb and fun and based on a brilliant podcast.