The Poetry of Tommy Pico

        Tommy Pico works very hard to avoid falling into stereotypes. As both an indigenous poet of the Kumeyaay Nation and a self-described “technology-addicted New Yorker,” much of his work attempts to square two identities which society perceives as incompatible. The second entry in his tetralogy of poetry books, Nature Poem, centers around his distaste for the titular form, the way it becomes “fodder for the noble savage / narrative.” Rather than reinforce the expectation that Native people should extol the beauty and power of nature, Pico writes that he would “slap a tree across the face” and promptly changes gears to a story about a hookup at a pizza parlor. He performs this move frequently throughout his poetry, uncomfortably juxtaposing digressions on nature and the genocide of his ancestors with his high-speed modern day life of dating apps and concerts. 

        Pico’s writing shows how he feels that he lacks the freedom to love nature without playing into a centuries-old system of oppression in which he is categorized as less than human. As someone who was raised to love and cherish nature and the outdoors, such a freedom feels like it should be a right for every person on this Earth. Hearing Pico’s concerns feels upsetting, as does the implicit question of whether my own “outdoorsy” upbringing would have transpired were it not for the historical subjugation of Native peoples. Pico’s poetry interests me precisely because it does not speak to my experience. In its determination to carve out space for its own voice, the poetry forces me as the reader to consider the larger forces shaping my lived experience and how they might affect others differently. While Pico’s tetralogy of poems is complete for the moment, I look forward to whatever future projects he turns his attention to next.

Buy Nature Poem here!

 

 

Journey to Monkey Beach with Eden Robinson

“You should not go to Graceland without an Elvis fan. It’s like Christmas without kids—you lose that sense of wonder. . .”

So writes Indigenous Canadian author Eden Robinson in Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols & Modern Storytelling, a trilogy of short stories. In the second story, she uses fiction-prize money to take her Elvis-obsessed mother to The King’s old mansion Graceland in Tennessee. Witty and heartfelt, sharp and grounded, and so seriously quirky, it was quite the tale. I had to check out more of Robinson’s work.

Robinson is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. Her profile on her publisher’s website lists her hobbies: “Shopping for the Apocalypse, using vocabulary as a weapon, nominating cousins to council while they’re out of town, chair yoga, looking up possible diseases or syndromes on the interwebs, perfecting gluten-free bannock and playing Mah-jong.” Stephanie Chou writes: “Eden Robinson has the most contagious laugh on this side of the globe. She shares a birthday with Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton and is certain this affects her writing in some way. Combine these sensibilities with her early influences of Stephen King and David Cronenberg, and it’s natural that Eden’s writing is at once humorous and dark.”

“Humorous” and “dark” are certainly applicable adjectives for Robinson’s first novel, Monkey Beach. Wise men say only fools rush in, but I unfortunately couldn’t help falling in love with this book. Published in 2000, it follows the young Lisamarie (named for Elvis’ daughter) as she struggles with her little brother’s mysterious disappearance at sea. The novel swims into Lisa’s memories of a childhood on the Canadian coast, and interpolates Indigenous mythology into daily life. Lisa takes off to find her brother on the mysterious Monkey Beach, embarking on an oft-surreal journey of self-discovery and sasquatches. I’ve never before encountered “Northern Gothic” (as opposed to Southern Gothic) as a genre, and this was the best possible introduction.

Monkey Beach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, awarded annually to a fiction writer from Yukon or B.C. In 2020, the novel was also adapted into a film that won multiple awards at the American Indian Film Festival. Emily St. John Mendel (author of the acclaimed Station Eleven, Sea of Tranquility, and The Glass Hotel) lists it among her favorite books. Mendel laments that it got little recognition outside of Canada -- it was not marketed much to U.S. audiences. I hope, however, that more readers get their hands on this wonderful book, in the U.S. and beyond. It certainly left me all shook up.

You can buy Monkey Beach from us at this link:

https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9780676973228

Celebrating Native American Authors and their new releases

by Jamille Christman

Native American culture has always been steeped in rich storytelling.  Everything around them is full of stories, from the fantastical and hopeful to cautionary tales meant to warn against the dangers of the world.  While this can be a very deep part of their identity, their stories are often not heard and their voices are often silenced.  While things in the publishing world have gotten better, Native American representation trails behind other minority groups.  Zippia statistics show that only .4% of published authors are Native Americans.  Since 2018, published Native American authors have steadily decreased, even though minorities in publishing are getting more attention.  Representation is so very important, and will pave the way for new generations of Native Americans writing gripping and important stories. This Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month, I want to celebrate by highlighting some of the most astonishing stories written by Native Americans about Native Americans this year, and keep these stories alive and thriving.

Bad Cree
By Jessica Johns (Cree)
In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.
“A mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart.” —Paul Tremblay

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Never Whistle at Night
By Shane Hawk (Cheyenne-Arapaho/Hidatsa/Potawatomi) and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Mackinac Bands of Chippewa/Ottawa)
These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.
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The Storyteller
By Brandon Hobson (Cherokee)
A middle-grade adventure. Ziggy's mother disappeared when he was very young, making her one of many Native women who've gone mysteriously missing. Ziggy and his sister, Moon, want answers, but nobody around can give them.
Once Ziggy gets it in his head that clues to his mother's disappearance may be found in a nearby cave, there's no stopping him from going there. Along with Moon, Alice, and his best friend, Corso, he sets out on a mind-bending adventure where he'll discover his story is tied to all the stories of the Cherokees that have come before him.
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Don’t Fear the Reaper
By Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet)
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho., in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
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Godly Heathens: A Novel (The Ouroboros #1)
H.E. Edgmon (Seminole)
Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers’ queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who’s a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn.
When Gem is attacked by a stranger claiming to be the Goddess of Death, Willa Mae saves their life and finally offers some answers. She and Gem are reincarnated gods who’ve known and loved each other across lifetimes. But Gem hasn’t always been the most benevolent deity. They’ve made a lot of enemies, like the Goddess of Death, who will keep coming.
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White Horse
By Erika T. Wurth (Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee)
"This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King." ―Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic

Erika T. Wurth's White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit

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To Shape a Dragon’s Breath
By Moniquill Blackgoose (Seaconke Wampanoag)
A young, Indigenous woman enters a colonizer-run dragon academy after bonding with a hatchling-and quickly finds herself at odds with the "approved" way of doing things-in the first book of a brilliant new fantasy series. The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations-until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon's egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered: a Person Who Belongs to a Dragon but not to the Anglish conquerors of her land. They have a very specific idea on how a dragon should be raised-and reluctantly allowed her to enroll in a proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland. If she cannot succeed there, then her dragon will be destroyed. For the world needs changing-and Anequs and her dragon are less coming of age in this bold new world than coming to power
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The Council of Dolls
Mona Susan Power (Sioux)
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
The long-awaited, profoundly moving, and unforgettable new novel from PEN Award-winning Native American author Mona Susan Power, spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day.
From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried....

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Swim Home to the Vanished
Brendan Shay Basham (Navajo)

When the river swallowed Kai, Damien's little brother didn't die so much as vanish. Wanting to leave his grief behind he drives as far away to start over and finds himself in a village. Everyone mistrust the new stranger in this little village except a kind woman who takes him in after she also lost her daughter. Ana Maria gives him a place to stay and a job But how long can he resist the rumors swirling through town suggesting Ana Marie might have had something to do with her daughter's death? Marta, who is Ana Marie's other daughter is driven by a fierce need for revenge? Swiftly, Damien finds himself caught in a power struggle between the brujas, a whirlwind battle that threatens to sweep the whole village out to sea

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The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Debra Magpie Earling (Bitterroot Salish)
"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.
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A Song Over Miskwaa Rapids
Linda LeGarde Grover (Ojibwe)
When a rock is dislodged from its slope by mischievous ancestors, the past rises to meet the present, and Half-Dime Hill gives up a gruesome secret it has kept for half a century. 
Margie Robineau, in the midst of a fight to keep her family's long-held allotment land, uncovers events connected to a long-ago escape plan across the Canadian border, and the burial of not one crime but two. Dale Ann is confronted by her own long-held secrets and the truth that the long ago and the now, the vital and the departed are all indelibly linked. Margie prepares her statement for the tribal government, defending her family's land from a casino development and sorting the truths of Half-Dime Hill from the facts that remain there. Throughout the narrative, a chorus of spirit women gather in lawn chairs with coffee and cookies to reminisce, reflect, and speculate, spinning the threads of family, myth, history, and humor.
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Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir
Thomas C. Gannon (Cheyenne)
A hilarious and humane memoir that spans more than fifty years of childhood walks and adult road trips to deliver, via a compendium of birds recorded and revered, the author's life as a part-Lakota inhabitant of the Great Plains. Great Horned Owl, Sandhill Crane, Dickcissel: such species form a kind of rosary, a corrective to the rosaries that evoke Gannon's traumatic time in an Indian boarding school in South Dakota, his mother's devastation at racist bullying from coworkers, and the violent erasure colonialism demanded of the people and other animals indigenous to the United States.

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Venco
Cherie Dimaline (Metis)
Lucky St. James a millennial Metis and her grandmother, Stella are about to be evicted.  After hearing an otherworldly energy in the wall, she finds an old spoon with SALEM etched into it. Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches across North America who have anxiously awaited her discovery. Hiding in plain sight, a large company with vast resources VenCo, an anagram of "coven" has awaited for the seven spoons to come together returning the network of witches to their rightful power while a very powerful witch hunter as old as witchcraft itself hunts them. Lucky and Stella must go to the showdown in the magical city of New Orleans that will determine if the witches will remain underground or usher a new beginning
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See where the nations these authors and stories take place

Click Here to show an interactive map of territories, languages and treaties