The lost journals of Sacajewea : a novel /
Material type: TextPublisher: Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2023Description: 244 pages : 23 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781571311450
- 1571311459
- 813/.6 EARLINGĀ 23/eng/20221004
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Fiction | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | EARLINE (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610024071958 | |||
Standard Loan | Harrison Library Adult Fiction | Harrison Library | Book | EARLING (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Checked out | 06/01/2024 | 50610024132610 | ||
Standard Loan | Liberty Lake Library Adult Fiction | Liberty Lake Library | Book | FIC EARLING (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Checked out | 06/05/2024 | 31421000712605 | |||
Standard Loan | Newport Library Adult Fiction | Newport Library | Book | EARLING (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 50610023000446 | ||||
Standard Loan | Priest Lake Library Adult Fiction | Priest Lake Library | Book | F EARLING (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 50610024207594 |
Total holds: 0
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Winner of the Montana Book Award
From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea."In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe's rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby's cry." Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history. Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of "learning all ways to survive": gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark's expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance--the Indigenous woman's story that hasn't been told.
"From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea"--
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Earling(Perma Red) reimagines the story of Sacajewea in this powerful outing. Sacajewea is raised among the Lemhi Shoshone by loving parents around the turn of the 19th century, and she learns about the natural world from her elders. She looks forward to marriage with the warrior Blue Elk until raiders descend on her village, identified by Sacajewea only as "Enemies." They murder her parents and kidnap her, and she is forced to marry Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Though she's repeatedly raped by her husband, Sacajewea writes of the solace and hope she finds with other Native women. Still, her nightmare continues with the arrival of Lewis and Clark. As Charbonneau's property, Sacajewea must travel with the explorers, carrying her unwanted newborn son. Along the way, Lewis and Clark trample burial grounds, senselessly kill animals, and steal from people, prompting Sacajewea to reflect, "I tire of... white men's stingy-gut ways to own all things and keep all things to their selves." Earling adds a much-needed Native woman's perspective to Sacajewea's story, bringing a note of resilience to her unflinching account of the white men's violence and depredation: "Women do not become their Enemy captors. We survive them." This is a beautiful reclamation. (May)Booklist Review
In conventional history, Sacajewea is described as a guide or interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The known facts of her life are few: she was born a Lemhi Shoshone; around age 9 she was captured when her tribe was invaded; in her early teens she was given to a trader named Charbonneau, who impregnated her. When Charbonneau was hired by Lewis and Clark as an interpreter, Sacajewea, the only woman on the expedition, and her newborn were brought along. Earling (Perma Red), a member of the Bitterroot Salish, deftly uses her knowledge of Native American cultures and history to give Sacajewea the opportunity to tell her own experience. Using Native American concepts, Sacajewea's journal reveals a happy and secure childhood cut short by the invaders who capture her and take her from all she knows, before she is brutalized, raped, and controlled by a cruel, ignorant, bumbling man and sent on a forced march during which she sees the land and nature she reveres exploited and despoiled by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This challenging and rewarding book illuminates the life of a wise and brave young woman who is often relegated to a stereotypical and ancillary role in history.Kirkus Book Review
How early America may have looked to an iconic figure in Native American history. This novel offers a revisionist history of Sacajewea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who, while still a teenager, provided critical assistance to the Lewis and Clark expedition in their exploration of the Louisiana Territory. Drawing on the limited historical information available, the author--who's Bitterroot Salish--conjures a nuanced and compelling rendition of her title character, who recounts her experiences in a distinctive mode of English. What we discover here is a startlingly new perspective on watershed historical events, particularly as they relate to the contributions of Native Americans in both aiding and resisting Western expansion across the continent in the early 19th century. The journal entries gradually build a convincing imaginative world through finely observed descriptions of daily life as well as philosophical reflections on the significance of the cultural transformations underway. Through Sacajewea's eyes we learn, for instance, of the personal and collective impacts of violent encroachments on Indigenous land and the gradual unfolding of cultural genocide along with the significance of traditional lifeways in managing the evolving conditions of survival. The suffering--and bold, ingenious agency--of women held as captives by both Native and Euro-Americans is rendered with special vividness; among the most poignant sections of the work are those in which the narrator recounts her endurance of a forced "marriage" to the French Canadian trader known as Charbonneau. The narration is rich in realistic detail but animated by a dreamlike intensity: "We have come to the place inhabited by the ghosts of my Taken Relations. We are not ourselves here. We are only shimmer of self." Throughout the text, Sacajewea memorably enacts what Gerald Vizenor dubs survivance, the negotiation of existential challenges with a spirited, oppositional inventiveness. A profoundly moving imagining of the impressions and contributions of a major historical figure. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Debra Magpie Earling is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea . An earlier version of the latter, written in verse, was produced as an artist book during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is retired from the University of Montana, where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is Bitterroot Salish.There are no comments on this title.
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