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The Beadworkers
The Beadworkers: Stories | Beth Piatote
3 posts | 5 read | 1 reading | 4 to read
Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world Told with humor, subtlety, and beautiful spareness, the mixed-genre works of Beth Piatote's first collection find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return. A woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship. An eleven-year-old girl narrates the unfolding of the Fish Wars in the 1960s as her family is gradually drawn to the front lines of the conflict. In 1890, as tensions escalate at Wounded Knee, two young men at collegeone French and the other Lakotaeach contemplate a death in the family. In the final, haunting piece, a Nez Perce/Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a moving revision of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Formally inventive, witty, and generous, The Beadworkers, a singular debut collection, draws on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life in the Americas.
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review
audraelizabeth
Mehso-so

Th lack of translation was sometimes difficult but otherwise wonderful. #roll100 @PuddleJumper #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks #readharder2022 anthology featuring diverse voices

15 likes3 comments
review
ReadingEnvy
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Pickpick

These short stories, some poetics, and one play/script type story focus on relationships between people in the northwest that have some kind of indigenous background, most often Nez Perce. The author includes some Nez Perce language and some elements of traditional tales (Coyote may show up) but for the most part the stories are contemporary people navigating their lives. ↘️

ReadingEnvy I was immediately drawn in by the cover because Mt Hood was my closest mountain growing up and my morning bus ride often included a view of the sun coming up behind it. Looking closer, the image is rendered in beadwork by Marcus Amerman (beadwork is a tradition mentioned in multiple stories.)↘️ 3y
ReadingEnvy My Mom had a close friend who grew up on the Yakama rez which is mentioned here, and I went to a few salmon bakes in my childhood, so in some ways the characters feel familiar to me. They are diverse - a wide range of rural, suburban, and urban people with shared ancestry that comes along with its own set of expectations and traditions ...↘️ 3y
ReadingEnvy often unknown to the non indigenous people around them, including gifts of blankets and specific locations for ceremonies. Some stories are experimental in form (one revolves around the creation of a board game) while others are more narrative. Highly recommended! 3y
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blurb
MargaretPinardAuthor
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Oh, loves. These stories are so raw and affecting.
I did not expect to be brought to tears by this early morning reading but here we are.
Such brilliant portrayal of snatches of Native life.
#yourecrying #bethpiatote #nezperce #pacificnorthwest #turtleisland #indigathon

29 likes2 stack adds