Customer Reviews

Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My husband and I lived with the Navajos for 12 years. From 1950 to 1962. We lived in the most isolated parts of the reservation and got to know the Navajos well. I am a cultural anthropologist. This book describes the old time Navajos' way of life and how it was being destroyed by the superimposing Anglo culture, slowly, insidiously. It is also a love story. The Navajo landscape is realistic, every time the dialogue changes, it is written so I can hear a Navajo or a Hopi or an Anglo speaking.

It is a powerful book and one that I have read many times. LaFarge is a poet and he spoke Navajo so he knew their pattern of thinking, their "world view" so to speak. I can't recommend it too highly.

I thoroughly enjoyed Oliver LaFarge's book, LAUGHING BOY, because the Navajos were portrayed authentically. There are not many books written that do justice to writing about Native American culture so I was pleasantly surprised to find out a non-Native American had written a novel about the Navajos.
The novel presents the story of a young Navajo couple as they start their lives together. They are in a time when things are changing for their people and their way of life. The Navajos are no longer isolated and free from Anglo influences. The "civilizing" of the Navajos has started and Slim Girl has experienced it already when she meets Laughing Boy.
The couple begin their life amidst this change and encounter other obstacles on their road to total happiness. Laughing Boy is a traditional Navajo and has yet to realize the world outside the reservation and this "innocence" could be Slim Girl's salvation. Slim Girl is out of harmony with herself and with her people. The novel does an excellent job conveying that harmony is the ultimate goal for Laughing Boy and especially, Slim Girl.
The novel is similar to Willa Cather's, MY ANTONIA, in that, the readers may have preferred a different outcome for the characters, but what was written is more profound. I completely enjoyed reading LAUGHING BOY and recommend it to readers who may want to experience true Navajo culture and true love combined.

Once you read Laughin Boy you'll remember it forever. I've read it in high school many years ago, my teenage daughter read it, now I planned on reading it to my 4 year old. The landscape that La Farge describes in the book is genuine. Every time we pass through Tee Nos Pos,AZ I can image where Laughing Boy may have ran. My teenagers today know little of their own people, through this book their eyes have open, they've learned a little about them and the old traditions. Even though Laughing Boy is fictitious some parts are authentic!

As an award-winning Arizona historian, I'd like to pass on that several Arizona pioneers and fellow historians recommended this book to me and I'd like everyone who is interested in Indian/Anglo relations to read it. LaFarge lived in the Four Corners area in the 1920s and published Laughing Boy as his masters thesis for an anthropology degree. And yet it is also fine writing, well crafted and as artistic as Laughing Boy's silver work. Along with "The Virginian" this is a very early example of western fiction which has survived the test of time. It's not often that one can absorb historical truths through fiction, but when done as well as this is, it is truly the best way to learn and enjoy.

This 1930 Pulitzer Prize novel is a heart-rendering look at young lovers brought together at a time when their world is astir with changes of which neither of them can control nor understand. The emerging culture of Slim Girl who has been given a Christian education clashes with the traditional Navajo norms of Laughing Boy. LaFarge has given powerful glimpes into the lives of these people as it was being played out in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Within this context is a compelling love story that is near poetry as the author gives us an unvarnished look at their struggles.

This heart-rending story of a Navaho man and his non-traditional wife was truly an education. Like every other great book, each word seems inspired, each paragraph flows perfectly from the last to the next, and you just won't be able to put this book down. When you finish it at last, you'll want to read it again. I loved The Education Of Littletree. I like Laughing Boy even more. Don't miss it

This story not only depicts what life was like for Navajos before their resettlement on reservations, it also reveals a beautiful love story. Descriptions and imagery are alive and alluring, the point of view is revealing and personal. A good way to walk in anothers' mocassins!

Reading it again in my fifties, I still found it to be one of the best novels I've ever read. Laughing Boy has a strong self. He know who and what he is and is happy. The woman he loves knows two worlds, that of the Navaho and that of the Whites. She is attracted to both and despises both. This is her tragedy. Laughing Boy loves her,loses her but we know he will go on.

This is a Western in which white people play a very limited role. It is the coming of age story of a young Navajo man and his attempts to deal with the detrimental affects white acculturation has had on his young wife. Her tragic effort to regain her lost Navajo heritage through her husband makes this book a timeless classic.

"Laughing Boy" by Oliver La Farge was written in in 1920. It Called a Navajo love story, it is beautifully written and wne the Pulitzer. My book club selected it. It is considered a classic.