Welcome to Litsy!

This got me. Multi-genre, images, graphs, fictionalized imaginings and quotes from 100+ year-old articles. Personal history is also the history of a people.

Truly stunning memoir. As much a history of California's Mission Indians as it is a story of Miranda's family, and of herself. Miranda is a wry, well-researched, and thoughtful writer who tackles the joys and traumas of life with clear eyes and descriptive prose. (And she makes excellent arguments for doing away with the bullshit CA mission projects for elementary schoolers.)

"...who we are is where we are from...Our bodies, like compasses, still know the way" (208).

Miranda's book is funny AND sincere about #storytelling as pain and healing.

"I think that's the visceral response of the human body to inescapable pain: forget about it" (196). Miranda offers us an alternative: talk about it. Share those stories and laugh about them and cry about them and theorize them. As Thomas King says, we are all made of stories.