Booklist Review

Born to a Cherokee mother and a Creek father, Harjo is now one of the oldest living members of her family line. Explaining the impetus for writing this stirring memoir, she says, My generation is now the door to memory. Even as a child, Harjo loved poetry, which she called singing on paper, a love encouraged by the novel-like dream stories told by her Cherokee Irish grandmother. Harjo calls the years from elementary school through adolescence an eternity of gray skies, as first her father and then her stepfather were consumed by alcoholism and became abusive. Once she enrolls at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she feels as if she's finally been set free and that she and her fellow students were part of an enormous indigenous cultural renaissance. Harjo mimics her mother's bad marriage choices but is eventually saved from her demons and the panic attacks that haunt her by the all-encompassing spirit of poetry. In her harrowing and ultimately hopeful story, Harjo allows the reader to know her intimately, and we are enriched by her honesty.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist