Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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laughing to keep from crying

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff

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A book to make you howl with both laughter and fury, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem gushes with humor, outrage, determination, and life. Kliph Nesteroff has worked with a large and knowledgeable team to document the past, track the current, and look towards the future of Native American comedy. Framed around a beloved punchline from Charlie Hill, the first Native American comedian to be featured on The Tonight Show, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, is both a knee-slapper and a heart-breaker.

I do not want to steal the spotlight from the many Native comedians that Nesteroff chronicles, nor do I want to lay out all of the historical details that he has arranged with care, thought, and humor…you just have to read this book. The story of modern Native stand-up is told through interviews, ride-alongs, and setlists with current artists from both America and Canada. They share the stories of their careers with radical candor, as well as the stories of their families, contemporaries, and communities. Nesteroff alternates their stories with the history of Native entertainers in the US and Canada; artists who survived forced migration, residential schools, horrific state-sanctioned abuse and much more, who rose above the mess thrust upon them to entertain, enlighten, and inspire.

Starting with Wild West Shows (often the only way that a Native person could find any sort of freedom) and continuing on through current acts like The 1491s and Jana Schmieding (who is currently writing for and acting in Rutherford Falls), We Had A Little Real Estate Problem provides a solid base for comedy fans and equity minded folks alike. Nesteroff, a huge comedy fan, knows when to listen, when to probe, and when to pass the mic. He passes the mic to people who tell their own stories; people who have fought for their little piece of the entertainment landscape in a land that was stolen from them. Again; I don’t want to share their jokes here- read this book (or listen to it!) as soon as you can. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn.

Started November 12th. Finished January 12th. The breaks in reading were NECESSARY

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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…but the journey was worth it.

This book is brutal. If you are sensitive at all to suffering- be it human, animal, generational, cultural- turn away now and do not look back.

Four Blackfeet men engage in a bit of last-minute less-than-legal Elk hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving. What happens that day never really leaves them, but what they left behind comes rocketing back into their lives 10 years later. The 10 years since that day have not been easy; the men are plagued by generational trauma, broken families, substance abuse, and systemic racism. They’ve been holding onto and pushing away from tradition. They’ve been wading through their own messes, unwilling and unable to see their wake pulling down the others – especially the women- around them.

Don’t let the dour description bring you down. Stephen Graham Jones is a fascinating and frenetic writer. His horrors are truly horrible, but he’s funny, sarcastic, and whip-smart. He has the generational webs of Louise Erdrich and the breakneck horror of Stephen King. He is a big fan of both, and his influences show in Easter Egg bursts of tenderness and chaos.

The horror within this book is truly, truly horrible. The violence is sudden, graphic, and sickening. It all serves the story; the weight of the terrible and terrifying actions is mighty, permanent, and all-encompassing. These thrills aren’t cheap, but I cannot stress this enough- they are not for the faint of heart. Every action has a reaction, and every story has a violent beginning and a satisfying end.

“Denorah hates that she’d believed that, once upon a time. And she wants to cry for not getting to believe it anymore. Yes, the deer drank milk, and that left their mouths ringed white. Fuck it. Run, run.”

If you are curious- and strong of stomach- then you must listen to the audio. Shaun Taylor-Corbett is a phenomenal narrator. He voices half a dozen unique characters with both specificity and ease. He’s relaxed until he’s terrified. He’s smooth and sly until he’s ragged and begging. You can hear every look on his face. He’s absolutely amazing. As much as I want to read more Stephen Graham Jones, I want to listen to more Shaun Taylor-Corbett even more.

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author

 

 

Cohesive beauty that’ll knock you off your feet

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

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Joy Harjo a member of the Mvskoke Nation and is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. In An American Sunrise, Harjo skillfully crafts a collection poems that are deeply personal to her own life, highly informative of the Native history and experience, and wonderfully universal in truth and beauty.

What I found the most beautiful of the entire collection was Harjo’s ability to weave not just consistent themes throughout the entire collection but her ability to layer details, events, and people throughout the entire collection. While each poem was separate and unique, An American Sunrise is entirely cohesive; she is constantly circling back to her grandfather, her ancestors’ lands, the horror of the Trail of Tears, and more. Further tying together each poem into a single collection is Harjo’s balance of metaphoric and concrete language. At times, she writes in simile and metaphor and anthropomorphism while other times she is blunt and plain and clear.

Harjo reads her own works for the audiobook version of An American Sunrise which is a gift unto itself. I feel that good poetry can be read a myriad of ways with each of those ways bringing new meaning and interpretation to the poem. However, to hear Harjo’s deep, rich voice pause and break and sing through her poems was at many times breathtaking. This is especially true during “Chehotosakvtes” in which Harjo sings a song in a Native language.

Some of my favorite poems from the collection:

“Washing My Mother’s Body”: In this poem, Harjo writes about washing her mother’s body after she has passed. This poem is heartbreakingly personal, vulnerable, and tender.

“Singing Everything”: This poem is one of Harjo’s shorter pieces, but it is so impactful. One of my favorite lines of the entire collection is from this poem: “For death, those are the heaviest songs and they have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief”.

“My Man’s Feet”: This poem takes something as mundane as feet and manages to transform them into something magical and beautiful.

Dear Diary; nature has gone haywire

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

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A young Native American woman learns that she is pregnant in a time of miracles and disaster; nature has gone haywire. Evolution has sped up, gone sideways, and/or stopped all together. Times are trying. It is a particularly frightening time to be a single person with an unplanned pregnancy- especially when religious-esque government agents are collecting and imprisoning pregnant women.

Our narrator, Cedar, gives us her story through the pages of her diary. She is keeping accounts of her body and the world around her to give to her future child. The world is terrifying and wonderful in equal time; animals morph and change, family secrets come to life, and saints begin to show themselves to tribal elders along the way.

There is an obvious connection to Handmaid’s Tale to be made, but Future Home of the Living God is more in-step with Erdrich’s rich and varied catalog. Both stories are chronicles or the war on women, and both stories are narrated from an incomplete point of view, but Erdrich trademarks remain abound. Her prose is lyrical and mysterious. Her family histories are rich, warped, and deep. The greater world surrounding Cedar and her contemporaries is confusing, antagonistic, and ready to strike- but the eye of Cedar’s hurricane- her self, her unborn baby, and her mercurial family- remains solid and unwavering despite attacks both physical and spiritual.

There is always something to learn when reading Louise Erdrich; a fact that has kept me coming back to her for over a decade. In this instance I was introduced to the story of Kateri Tekakwitha – the first ever Native American to be canonized by the Catholic Church. I am not a religious person; I was raised Catholic but I no longer subscribe to any faith or denomination, but the cryptic and often unsettling stories of saints will always hold my interest.

I recommend taking the time to really sink into this world. I lent it out immediately after finishing, and it has since been passed outward to two more friends of friends.

Trigger warning: there is a character that speaks frankly and frequently of taking their own life. 



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