Customer Reviews

Dakota - A Spiritual Geography

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kathleen Norris is the author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, and The Cloister Walk. She is a poet. Dakota was her first work of nonfiction/memoir. Having read both Amazing Grace and The Cloister Walk, I had an idea of what to expect from Norris's work. She writes deeply personal and deeply spiritual books. Dakota has the same type of feel to it, but the location and the subject is different.

Kathleen Norris's past lay in western South Dakota, but for twenty years she had abandoned both her faith as well has her history. She went to school in New York but decides to move back to Lemmon, SD with her husband. Her book is subtitled "A Spiritual Geography". She writes early on that geography comes from the words for earth and writing, and so knowing that this is a spiritual geography we immediately know that this is a spiritual discussion of the Dakotas, as well as also being about Norris herself.

Norris writes about small town life and small town church, and a semi-history of the town of Lemmon. Since most of the details are told in anecdote, it makes things easier to read. One thing that struck me was how she was comparing monastic life to small town faith and how much things tied together like that. The focus on monastic life and on monks is a theme and a topic that will run throughout the book as well as into her subsequent books. Kathleen Norris may not have a mainstream Christian faith, but she has a deep reverence and respect for the Christian tradition and faith, especially that which has come from the monasteries.

This is a slow moving, peaceful book. It is thoughtful, intelligent, and moving. It is filled to the brim with a steady faith in Christ and in some ways, it moves like time spent in a monastery. I don't know if this sounds like a recommendation, but it is meant to be. I found Dakota to be very interesting and along with Dakota, I would recommend Norris's later book: Amazing Grace.

I had previously read two other books by Norris: The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace:A Vocabulary of Faith. I had given copies of both to friends and family. To be honest I didn't expect Dakota to be any better than those two, but I was mistaken. Norris' descriptions of her corner of South Dakota were breathtaking and almost made me want move there. I share a similar faith journey to Norris'and I find her understanding (and lack of understanding)of God as she is learning to know him to be very believable and at times very moving. Norris has to be one of the best writers currently writing about Christianity. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a closer relationship with God, and also to anyone who appreciates good writing.

In the 1970's, Kathleen Norris and her husband adopted the principles of voluntary simplicity long before it became fashionable, leaving New York City for Lemmon, South Dakota. But western South Dakota could put even those who crave voluntary simplicity to the test--rural living within 50 miles of a major city is quite different from rural living 90 miles from the nearest Greyhound bus stop! Even the landscape, which allows one to see farm lights 50 miles away, is stark. "Seeing" the details in the landscape requires attention to the movement of grasshoppers in a plain devoid of trees. The people, isolated from the outside world, are often content with their lack of information and proud of their independence from it.
But such simplicity allows the spirit to find itself in the stillness, as Norris discovers. And to find and extend true hospitality, as the Benedictines and rural South Dakotans so warmly do.
I wish I had read this book before I moved to southeastern South Dakota in 1996....it gave me many insights into its people and philosophy. I guess I thought that living in a college town would be more "cosmopolitan", but there's an awful lot of rural South Dakota even in its college towns.
As I prepare to move back to suburban St. Louis, I realize that my two years in South Dakota have been an enriching, growth experience which have given me a changed perspective (also found a wonderful church with some Benedictine influence....I will miss the sense of community I found in my smaller parish.)
Kathleen Norris has written a poignant tribute to rural life, but it's not a Chamber of Commerce travelogue. Moving to South Dakota is not for the fainthearted!

Norris is quite amazing, having overcome the natural fault of looking at the world through her previous pre-conceptions...i.e., a New Yorker who just has to comment on how different real small town life is. She is one of the few who can actually convey the essence of a small town (and her credibility is strengthened by her fair mention of both pros and cons).

My Dad had an uncle who homesteaded in Lemon, SD (where Norris lives) and I spent most summers on my Mom's family's ranch on the James River. Norris helped me understand what all those years were really about.

The stark spirituality of her monastic experiences are powerful. This is why the book is not a slow read (as many have commented)....it is a quiet read.....and from that forgotten strength in our busy world, this book is a remarkable refuge.

Read this in quiet.....understand small town life on the starkly beautiful great northern plains......and become a better person for the time you give Norris' writing. I predict you will find another small piece to the puzzle of where you fit into the great scheme of things....whether it be your religious beliefs or your sense of history, geography, art, or self....it's in there and she will help you to reach it in her own quiet and mysterious way.

I loved this book, which I found in the AGRICULTURE section at Borders! That was a puzzler, b/c DAKOTA has nothing to say about growing plants and everything to say about people. I thought Norris's observations about small towns where people seem figuratively to stand around with their fingers in their ears, daring anyone to try to tell them anything, analogous to places of business where I've worked and other small communities, such as churches. I found the book clear-eyed, poetic, unsentimental, deeply spiritual and altogether riveting. I should add that so did our book club, people of many different tastes and experiences.

My grandparents live about 30 miles from Lemmon, SD (the setting of Norris's memoir). I was overwhelmed at times while reading Dakota: A spiritual Geography. She has portrayed the people as only an insider/outsider can -- seeing both the faults and the strengths of a small midwestern town. What touched me more than anything, however, was her portrayal of the land. This beautiful, striking, and awe inspiring landscape is brought to life by Norris. I had tears in my eyes while reading and felt pangs of homesickness. Dakota can be a slow read, but it is a beautiful book.

This was one of the most enjoyable and stimulating reads I have had for a long time. It is doubtful whether any other reader of this book is so far removed, geographically, from Lemmon, South Dakota, (where the author Kathleen Norris lives), as myself. Yet, living in the open spaces of the wheatbelt in Western Australia allows me to probably identify with the author's situation more than a New Yorker (and NY city is where Norris relocated from - back to her family roots in SD). Her instinctive knowledge and portraits of small town life is applicable not only to her own patch, in the far northwest of SD, but also, in so many respects, to other lands.

Kathleen Norris gives a nice blend of Dakotan history-interwoven with topical,personal and spiritual issues. The chapter on the small church at Hope gives a great insight into the dynamics of a small farming/ranching community. 'Getting to Hope' filled me with the same. Presumably, the great colour picture on the cover of 'Dakota' was of this prairie church that somehow typifies the spiritual geography,described by Norris in her text.

The author's ecumenical bent is obvious by the fact that, although solidly Protestant, she values the monastic life and, as a Benedictine oblate, she takes the reader with her, 'on retreat,' behind the walls, giving a realistic appraisal of the community of Catholic monks and making some interesting comparisons between monastic life and that of small towns. Visiting 'the Big Apple' Norris is told by a dying friend, " I like the person you are becoming...those monks are good for you. Don't let them forget me." Norris notes:" Suddenly I saw...what monks are for. Their hospitality allowed us to say our goodbyes and allowed my friend a chance to bless me and charge me with keeping her memory." Any lingering notions that Norris had of monks being an anachronism went out the window and into the Manhattan night!

In a sense, 'Dakota'did much the same for me. I read it in mid- January as I spent time in my parents home, usually alone, cleaning up after my step-father's death (on Christmas Day). Birth, death, new life are important subjects and Norris has the ability and strength of writing to gently make her reader reflect on these great issues. She writes for all, yet writes for one. (I suppose it is appropriate that I write this review on my birthday).

In writing this book Norris has crossed many boundaries-far wider than the Great Plains. She has not made me want to visit South Dakota- I have wanted to do that for a long time- but she has ensured that when I do I will certainly take-in her remote part of the state. However, one doesn't have to physically travel to Dakota to make a great journey- that happens when you commence to read this book. Highly recommended.

Her first book, and her best. I keep coming back to it. I've given copies to relatives and friends, and they've given copies to relatives and friends. . .

A resident of California, but a native of South Dakota, I understand the grandeur of the vast prairie. Since leaving South Dakota in 1987, I have lived in four cities in four different states. When I first read "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography" I found solice in a journey based in simplicity and humility, when I had traversed these United States in a whirlwind trying to find just that. Simplicity. Humility. "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography" is an honest, thoughtful account of one persons journey in a place that is vast and empty. As empty as the sky. I remember when the book was first published. Many people I spoke with found the book to be offensive and an incorrect vision of what S.Dak and N.Dak life was really like. They felt themselves being riciculed or "made fun of" by a big city author who "had no right". My grandfather an 85 year long time S. Dak educator, mentioned to me that he thought the book was full of cheap shots about the land he loved so much. I marveled at these reactions because they completely mirrored Norris's account of a people so willing to hold on to what they know, what is safe. This one of the dichotemies that she so accurately describes about prairie life. Norris's book taought me a great deal about finding solice in myself. As Continue on my journey, which seems to be geographically diverse I remain aware of the desert that I hold within me. That we all do. It is not a matter of geography but one of having the courage to look within and face those empty spaces we all have. I highly reccomend this soulful, honest and thoughtful slice of Western south Dakota life to anyone who has that courage. MEG

Kathleen Norris's "Dakota" is truly a masterpiece. Instead of a traditional novel, she keeps a journal which includes thematic motifs, analyses of geography and people, short vignettes, and--as always--insightful illumination into her relationship with God as defined by her oblate status to the Benedictine order. Spiritual, haunting, and DEEP. It doesn't flow smoothly--she chooses to randomly change the format of her narrative--but with this is the small-town charm that both she--and her book--lovingly possess.