Roofwalker [Paperback]

Susan Power (Author)

Book Description

Series: Milkweed National Fiction Prize | Publication Date: August 10, 2004

In Roofwalker, Native American writer Susan Power explores the complexities of contemporary Native American life. Featuring both fiction and nonfiction — "stories" and "histories" — the book shows the ways that native traditions and beliefs work for characters who live physically and spiritually far from the reservation. The first seven pieces are "stories," such as the title tale in which a young girl believes in the power of the "roofwalker" spirit to make her dreams come true; or "Beaded Souls," in which Maxine Bullhead, living in Chicago, is cursed by the sin of her great-grandfather, an Indian policeman sent to arrest Sitting Bull. The last five pieces are "histories" that repeat subjects and themes found in the earlier section, making Roofwalker a book in which spirits and the living commingle and Sioux culture and modern life collide with disarming power, humor, and joy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Power continues to explore her Native American heritage in this short story collection, a poignant, evocative follow-up to her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning first book, The Grass Dancer. Many of the stories have dual settings involving Sioux protagonists who have emigrated from North Dakota to Chicago, starting with the title story, which tells of a young girl's longings for her father after he abandons her mother and the girl's two siblings. Family ties are another connecting thread: "Watermelon Seeds" is a familiar story about a 16-year-old girl who tries to battle her mother's disapproval after her older boyfriend gets her pregnant; "Beaded Soles" is a taut, unusual tale in which a woman murders her husband after a difficult relocation to Chicago and a miscarriage. Power effectively uses vivid, colorful Native American imagery and myths in the longer stories, but several of the shorter entries are fragmented and shakier-"The Attic" is an ordinary account of some intriguing heirlooms that a woman finds among her family's artifacts, while "Chicago Waters" is a better, more complex series of musings about the perils and potential of swimming in Lake Michigan. The author displays a greater sense of narrative command here than in her debut, which allows her to take risks with her conceits and story lines. Occasionally she veers toward cliches of Native American fiction, but her confident voice marks her as a writer with potential.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Power's first book, The Grass Dancer, featured tales of life on the reservation and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Roofwalker, this year's winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, focuses mainly on the lives of Native Americans and mixed bloods living away from the reservation, mostly in Power's native Chicago. Part fiction, part autobiography, these stories show what it's like to live between two worlds. In the title story, a nine-year-old girl struggles as her father, a "gung-ho Indian," leaves his job at the Indian Center in Chicago to return to his native South Dakota, taking with him not his family but a young girlfriend. "First Fruits" tells the story of a young woman's initial days at Harvard, beginning with the orientation tour, where her father surprises everyone with his knowledge of the first Native students, thereby giving his daughter a support group of ancestors. In "The Attic," when 11-year-old Susan and her Dakota mother clean out the attic at the home of Susan's paternal grandmother, who had just moved to a nursing home, they find documents from ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence and fought in the American Revolution. This collection of moving, well-written tales is recommended for literary fiction collections. Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib.,
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157131041X
• ISBN-13: 978-1571310415
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dakota Values in the English Language, January 14, 2003

By 

Richard A. Sax (Grosse Pointe, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roofwalker (Hardcover)

Susan Power's second book more than fulfills the promise suggested by her earlier novel, The Grass Dancer. In a collection of fictional stories and nonfiction histories, she shows an incredible facility, even majesty, with the English language even as she shares with the reader both Lakota/Dakota faith and practice and the pains and pleasures of being principally an urban Indian with sometimes only a genetic memory of the Great Plains. Her characters are original and quirky--and therefore ring true, even as she causes readers to rethink not only the place and plight of American Indians but of all caring people who are destined to live, love, understand, misunderstand, forgive, become ill, and die then to reach not an exclusive Christian heaven denied to most but to an "Indian heaven [that] is democratic, it is home, it is the place where we shall all meet again to join in the Great Powwow which goes on well into the night."

As an English professor, I await with great expectation the opportunity to teach a Contemporary Literature course this summer when I will share this special text with undergraduate students.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roofwalker tastes good., June 7, 2005

By 

kaageyaasigek (minneapolis, mn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roofwalker (Hardcover)

This work may be too generous for the general reading public. Susan Power is not indulging the dominant culture's taste for stereotype and ownership of native american identity. This book challenges romantic assumptions that native women "celebrate life" or any other mantra that limits us to a single dimension. Roofwalker is a compliation of short stories which allows for multiple perspectives, ultimatly subverting the stereotypes the reader may be craving.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, January 20, 2003

By 

TundraVision (o/~ from the Land of Sky Blue Waters o/~) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roofwalker (Hardcover)

Susan Power masterfully blends fantasy, myth, and "Real Life" in this collection of "Urban Indians," frequently centered around the Chicago Native American Center. Guided by many Native voices, the reader is drawn along from pregnancy and birth to wasicum Nursing Home and death and back again in the circle of lives. Historical stops along the way to Here and Now include White Stone Hill, Little Big Horn, the "Indian ReOrganization" of the 1930's, and "relocation" of the 1950's.

Of particular poignancy is the tale of St. Jude and the "Angry Fish" and the visitation of grandma's dress in the Field Museum of Natural History. Published by Milkweed, Reviewed by TundraVision