Customer Reviews

The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

As an actual, real Navajo tribal member and as a writer I'm pretty disgusted by this. A hoax it is and pretty pathetic. I'm always surprised at how little most Americans know about my people. It's pretty disheartening. Definitely read the LA Weekly article http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lawcontent&task=view&id=12468&Itemid=47 for more on the Navahoax. If you want real Navajo writing read Lucy Tapahanso or for great writing read Leslie Marmon Silko (a Pueblo writer).

Nasdijj is NOT NAVAJO (Dine). He is a White guy from Michigan. He lied about being "Dine". His real name is Tim Barrus. As a member of the Dine Nation I am Truly disgusted with this fraud.

Hmmm.

Evidently the guy is actually white, Son of the Revolution, descended from Dutch ancestors and has as much Navajo blood as I do, and I'm from South Korea. The LA Weekly ran an expose of this nonsense in an article called "Navahoax".

So. Just how "seared" are you people? How overwhelmed are you now that you know it's a complete work of fiction and has no relevance to reality whatsoever? That the author is actually a white guy who grew up in a middle class life and went on to write gay leather fiction before trying his hand at being a Native American.

Frankly I give it one star because, what the hey, he took all of you in didn't he?

This book is really disgusting. The narrator seems to be a pedafile. I am sorry I wasted my money on this book and that my money went to support someone who produces this sort of trash.

It really outrages me that the only problem that people have with this book is that the author is a fake and not that this book is drenched in incestuous / pedafilic undertones.

Here are some quotes directly from the book:

This is the father talking about his son, Awee:

"Awee could be seductive. It scared me deep down into my bones where I hurt with him and me and all the things we could never be. Father and son would have to be enough. Even sith AIDS, Awee stood poised on the cusp of adolescence, and in his anxiety, he wanted everything. His vulnerability was awesome. I have seen him more than naked."

The son Awee tells his father

"I want to ride the bike naked with you at night."
The father then describes, "the dark hard against our balls. His arms around my belly. Holds fathers to their sons like fans."

The father says of his son
"I wish he would kiss me..."

The father describes his sons underwear: "I picked them up. His underpants. They do feel soft against my face..."

Father and son "Together. Shaving at the sink. Nude."

"All I could do to calm Awee is to hold him tight, let him melt into me, surround him with something of the softness of my darker places.


The father says of his son, "I was in love with him."


The father describes his feelings for his son:
"Monster that I am I will kiss upon the beauty of your bones. And sleep fitfully in sadness like a lover lost in moans."

The father describes his son:
" I wish he would sleep. He is so dangerous. In his underpants. He asks me to hold him. His dad never held him. Had never had the strength. For just awhile. Okay. I hold him. He sort of wilts. The ice picks will come soon enough. 'Is it sex?' he asks. He means my holding him. ' Yeah, it's sex,' I say. A lie. But a nice one."

This was one of my favorite books until I found out that the author made it up, and passed it off as memoir.

Beautifully written, it will challenge your sheltered mind with raw, in-your-face glimpses of our brothers dying on the fringes of our society.

Native American author Nasdijj delivers an unforgettable memoir with The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping, a chronicle of the death of his adopted son, a 12-year-old Navajo born with AIDS. Nasdijj, whose first son, also adopted, died of fetal alcohol syndrome, is persuaded to adopt Awee by the boy's parents, also AIDS patients. Against his better judgment, Nasdijj agrees. Taking on hopeless boys is something of an addiction with him, he admits.

"I want the mad ones," Nasdijj writes. "The children who have had everything taken away from them. The children who are broken and mad enough to attempt to repair themselves. The children mad enough to spit and fight."

Nasdijj makes some unorthodox decisions about how Awee should spend his last weeks of life, choices he suspects minivan moms would not approve of. Instead of hunkering down in a hospital or hospice, with pill bottles and intravenous drip close at hand, Nasdijj takes his son on a motorcycle to the coast, lets him play baseball, lets him spend the day in an auto repair shop and introduces him to several Indian rites of passage.

Along the way, Nasdijj exposes the failure of America's health care system to provide relief for indigent AIDS patients, especially those on Indian reservations, where welfare hospitals may take as long as six weeks to return blood test results. Awee is frequently in and out of the hospital-with pneumonia, with terrible pain from nerve damage, with sarcoma.

The most scathing criticism Nasdijj offers is the health care industry's failure to relieve a 12-year-old's pain. Here, Nasdijj runs up against a medical brick wall. Pain medications for children with AIDS haven't been developed, he writes, and doctors are unwilling to experiment.

Despite the prevailing darkness and forgone conclusion of The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping, the book has wonderful moments of humor, whimsy and warmth. But the narrative's most important accomplishment may very well be its biting commentary on the neglect of AIDS patients in a complacent society that mistakenly believes the monster has been leashed.

The book was touching and amazing to me. He is very poetic and so open and willing to write how he feels and what he is thinking. He writes things that most people would never dream to admit that is what they even thought about. Its wonderful. He is so real I love it. I have recommended this book to my friends and they love it as well. I was craving more when I was done with it. It was sensational. I read his other one as well and its just as good. This man is amazing. I would love to thank him for the insights he gave me and the way I was able to have his book help me in my life. I hope many more people can benifit from this mans writing as well. Nasdijj I say bravo to you, and Thank you.

Reading this book encouraged me take more risks in loving others, it's cost me more and it's hurt more, but I am also more fully alive as a result.

Nasdijj didn't always follow the 'accepted' rules of parenting with Awee and when he writes he doesn't always follow the rules with language. This upsets some people but I think - good for you Nasdijj. You don't get to new territory by traveling over the same ground.

Nasdijj was heart-breakingly open with his son Awee and he brings this same openness with readers to his writing. I read somewhere he has been referred to as a national treasure. As a reader I treasure his willingness to be so open with his experiences and feelings.

If you are tired of sentimental books about relationships that seem don't seem to delve much below the surface, you'll love Nasdijj's book.

Oh and the patience and insight of Crow Dog, one of Nasdijj's other sons, is not to be missed as well.

Wildly Enthusiastic Recommendation: The boy and the dog are sleeping by Nasdijj
I had to tear myself away from Awee, the little boy in this amazing memoir, to get out the door to run this morning. This book has absolutely gripped my essence. A story of love between a man and boy - not any man and boy. An 11-year old with AIDS and the dad he adopted - the daddy who is fabulously in love with the child, the child who has learned to love with all his being a father who is not his naturally, but has become his wholly, spiritually. No father could give and take more. That's the spirit of this relationship - giving and taking from each other. It seems to me Nasdijj gets the better portion of the giving. That's how Awee is. It's a very tough read. AIDS is not pretty, and Nasdijj tells us about things we wish did not exist. But you won't be the same after you read this book. It's a must.