SWOSU Hosts Oklahoma Humanities’ “Let’s Talk About It” Book Talk SeriesThe Al Harris Library and the SWOSU Department of Language and Literature invite you to a series of book talks featuring five acclaimed works exploring the diversity and complexity of Native American identity. The talks feature lively and thoughtful discussion moderated by local and guest scholars. The theme of the series is Native American Identity From Past to Present: A More Perfect Union.
Literature and popular media are littered with stereotypical and fantastical images and stories of Native American people, often painting them as people living in a mystical past or as a pure but vanishing race who remain on reservations, far removed from the rest of American society. This theme challenges this narrative by presenting Native American identity through the lens of Native writers and Native experiences. These writers speak to the complexities of Native identity: including mixed identity; colonial traumas, such as removal; living in urban spaces; and the way the past informs the present for Native American people, families, and tribal nations.
The book talks are open to everyone: students, employees, and members of the public. The talks meet at the Al Harris Library in the Instruction Room on the 2nd floor.
All of the books can be borrowed from the Al Harris Library. Pick up your copies at the library's front desk. No ID is required, and you don't need to return the books until the end of the semester.
Questions? Please contact the series' SWOSU sponsors:
Thursday, Sept. 12 at 7:00PM: Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Hosted by Dr. Kelley Logan, SWOSU Dept. of Language & Literature
About this book: 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.
Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7:00PM: There There by Tommy Orange
Hosted by Dr. Tracy Floreani, Oklahoma City University
About this book: A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.
Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.
Thursday, Oct. 10 at 7:00PM: The Removed by Brandon Hobson
Hosted by Dr. Becky Bruce, SWOSU Dept. of Social Sciences
About this book: In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, Sonja, leads a life of solitude, punctuated only by spells of dizzying romantic obsession. And their son, Edgar, fled home long ago, turning to drugs to mute his feelings of alienation.
With the family’s annual bonfire approaching—an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday and Ray-Ray’s death, and a rare moment in which they openly talk about his memory—Maria attempts to call the family together from their physical and emotional distances once more. But as the bonfire draws near, each of them feels a strange blurring of the boundary between normal life and the spirit world. Maria and Ernest take in a foster child who seems to almost miraculously keep Ernest’s mental fog at bay. Sonja becomes dangerously fixated on a man named Vin, despite—or perhaps because of—his ties to tragedy in her lifetime and lifetimes before. And in the wake of a suicide attempt, Edgar finds himself in the mysterious Darkening Land: a place between the living and the dead, where old atrocities echo.
Thursday, Oct. 24 at 7:00PM: Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah Miranda
Hosted by Mr. Frederic Murray, SWOSU Al Harris Library
About this book: Bad Indians—part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir—is essential reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Widely adopted in classrooms and book clubs throughout the United States, Bad Indians plumbs ancestry, survivance, and the cultural memory of Native California.
In this best-selling, now-classic memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen family and the experiences of California Indians more widely through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. Wise, indignant, and playful all at once, Bad Indians is a beautiful and devastating read, and an indispensable book for anyone seeking a more just telling of American history.
Thursday, Nov. 14 at 7:00PM: The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Hosted by Dr. Karen Youmans, Oklahoma City University
About this book: From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
While his father, a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning …
Oklahoma Humanities (OH) is an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen communities by helping Oklahomans learn about the human experience, understand new perspectives, and participate knowledgeably in civic life. As the state partner for the National Endowment for the Humanities, OH is a grant-making organization that provides a free educational magazine, Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibits, reading and discussion groups, and other cultural opportunities. OH engages people in their own communities, stimulating discussion and helping them explore the wider world of human experience.
Disclaimer: Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of Oklahoma Humanities or SWOSU.
