A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women [Hardcover]

Beth Brant (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Firebrand Books; Rev Sub edition (December 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932379567
• ISBN-13: 978-0932379566
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,925,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stories, essays, drawings, poems, by Native Women US,Canada, January 25, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women (Hardcover)

I think all these "Gathering of Spirit" books by Beth Brant (Degonwadonti), Mohawk writer are reprints/selections from the paperback she published in 1984 (Sinister Wisdom Press, long out of print). This began life as a special double issue of the quarterly magazine by the same name. Originally. Beth's project (to assemble these writings, art, photos, etc) was dedicated to Annie Mae Aquash, Micmac AIM woman leader who was assassinated by the U.S. government's covert intelligence agents in 1976, when she was about 35. Beth wrote to a list of Native organizations, but she also wanted "to hear from women yet unheard," so she wrote to prisons, and some of the best memoirs in the book come from imprisoned women.Beth writes in her into: "We (Native women) have a spirit of rage. We are angry at white men and their perversions. Their excessive greed, abuse of the sky and water. ...We are angry at Indian men for their refusals of us. For their limited vision of what constitutes a strong Nation. We are angry at the so-called "women's Movement" that always sems to forget we exist, except in romantic fantasies of earth mothers....We are not victims. We are organizaers, freedom fighters, healters...for centuiries it has been so. Some of the book's content (or originally was) in the form of letters from native women to Beth. It's hard to review a collection of hundreds of short contributions. Perhaps my favorite thing (in my early edition) is the satirical drawings of Janue Quick-to-See Smith, an artist whose work I admire, but these really made me laugh. But there is so much else there to like. I wonder if these newer editions will have the letters from Raven, Cherokee woman sentnced to die (gas chamber) for a killin gshe says she didn't commit: "I do not think much about this up-coming event [the execution]. I simply await it. My dream would be to have a mdicine man with me and a couple of my own people...I do not let my fear show, and rarely admit I have any fear...." I always wondered about that, who she was, the facts and circumstances, what happened. Well-knowqn writer Alice Walker said of the (original) collection, "This book is proof that love *can* be made visible." *Gathering of the Spirit* 1984 paperback is a book I often go back to; if the current veersions contain most of its contents, or similar, they are very worthwhile. I'v efound that teenage Indian (aka "Native American") city girls are interested and moved by just about all its contents.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gathering of Spirit Shares Women's Stories, March 20, 2005

By 

Jacques Paisner "Jacques Paisner Editor It St... (TouchArt Books Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women (Hardcover)

Beth Brant's Gathering of Spirit republished in 1988 gathers powerful stories by Indian woman of many tribal backgrounds across North America that first appeared in a paperback double issue of Sinister Wisdom. Includes art by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and others. The cover of the 1988 Firebrand reprint has a color pastel of "Elk Woman Gestating First Woman" by Charleen Touchette Author of "It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl."