What to Read After Sherman Alexie's #MeToo Revelations?

Author Sherman Alexie. Photo: Tulane Public Relations, Creative Commons Attribution

A lot of folks have been asking me what Native American authors they should read or even what books to teach since #MeToo accusations of sexual harassment against Sherman Alexie came to light this past March. I wrote about it at Yes! Magazine here: Why Reading Sherman Alexie Was Never Enough: As the #MeToo spotlight moves to Indian Country, epidemic violence against Native women meets tokenism in publishing. I will also be interviewed today on Oregon Public Radio's Think Out Loud show today about my article.

My daughter also asked me to prepare a list for her English teacher and I thought I'd share the initial, sometimes personal list, I put together for her. I don't teach Native American literature so this list simply represents books that I have enjoyed over the years with a few that I understand to be standards. It is by no means comprehensive and I will continue to develop it. Especially, since Multnomah County Libraries has asked me to put together a list for them to share on their blog. That list will be more comprehensive than this one for American Indians in Children's Literature's Best Books page for recommendations on YA and Children's literature. But for an initial stab, written for my daughter, here is a list ... well, my list, anyway:
sure. I'd also recommend checking out

Native American Recommended Books

Personal Favorites

• Speaking of Indians by Ella Cara Deloria, Yankton Dakota Sioux, published in 1944. Aunt Ella as she was known in my family was my grandmothers’ aunt and an ethnologist who worked with Columbia University. I have a personal connection to her work. I urge everyone to read her work. Also, highly recommend her ethnographic novel Waterlily. 
• Bighorse the Warrior by Tiana Bighorse, Navajo, published in 1994 and written by my great aunt about my great-great-grandfather. A must-read to hear stories as told within Navajo families about how we survived the assaults of the Americans against us.
• Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo, 1981. A book of poetry I turn to again and again for inspiration. Silko is also well-known for her novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead.
• The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna Pueblo, published in 1986, is a collection of critical essays and a cornerstone in the study of American Indian culture and gender. It has inspired me over and over again. Also well-known for her novel The Woman Who Owned the Shadows and her non-fiction book Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat, which received a Pulitzer Prize nomination are also worth a read.
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich, Ojibway, published in 2012 and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction that year. A prolific and talented novelist other books of hers to consider are The Plague of Doves, which a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
• She Had Some Horses: Poems by Joy Harjo, Muscogee Creek. A classic and seminal book of poems. Two that stay with me are the title poem “She Had Some Horses” and “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”. Also, highly recommend an anthology she co-edited with Gloria Bird Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America.

Classics & Must-Reads of Native American Literature

• The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa ancestors. Also, shouldn’t miss House Made of Dawn his novel which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969.
• Winter in the Blood by James Welch, Blackfeet, published in 1978. It was made into a film of the same name in 2012. Also, recommended are his historical novel, Fools Crow which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the American Book Award. I also recommend Indian Lawyer to show the challenges contemporary professional Native Americans have working in the white world. Welch’s work has large following overseas and is the only Native writer to be awarded the Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters) by the French Cultural Ministry.
• The Jailing of Cecelia Capture by Janet Campbell Hale, Couer d’Alene, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1985.
• Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria, Jr, Dakota. Another relative (my grandmother’s cousin). This book is a classic that emerged at the same time the Red Power movement was bringing Native issues into the news again. Also recommend God Is Red: A Native View of Religion and Red Earth, White Lies.