Doubters and Dreamers

Author: Janice Gould
ISBN: 9780816529278

Doubters and Dreamers opens with a question from a young girl faced with the spectacle of Indian effigies lynched and burned Òin jestÓ before UC BerkeleyÕs annual Big Game against Stanford: ÒWhatÕs a debacle, Mom?Ó This innocent but telling question marks the girlÕs entrŽe into the complicated knowledge of her heritage as a mixed-blood Native American of KoyangkÕauwi (Concow) Maidu descent. The girl is a young Janice Gould, and the poems and narrations that follow constitute a remarkable work of sustained and courageous self-revelation, retracing the precarious emotional terrain of an adolescence shaped by a motherÕs tough love and a growing consciousness of an ancestral and familial past. In the first half of the book, ÒTribal History,Ó Gould ingeniously repurposes the sonnet form to preserve the stories of her mother and aunt, who grew up when Òmuleback was the customary mode / of transportÓ and the Òspirit world was presentÓÑstories of Òold waysÓ and places claime

Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Publish Date: 2011-01-20

Subjects: Poetry / Native American, Poetry / General, Poetry / American / General

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