Customer Reviews

Sojourner's Truth and Other Stories

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

 

 

Contrary to amazon.com, the title of this book is "Sojourner's Truth," the truth in stories of someone pausing on her lifelong journey. Maracle knows who Sojourner Truth is, of course she's a liberation writer, and her actual title is something of a play on the name, but not the actual name of the Black heroine who led slaves to freedom.

Maracle is experimenting with attempts to combine Native oratory and storyteller oral styles with more conventional ways to invoke the reader's imagination.

Her stories are narratives of individuals -- a little girl who freezes to death after being kept in school detention; a boy abused in one of the forced residential (boarding) schools Indian children were taken away from their families and put into in order to break the culture, the language, the tribes, the people; a fish packing plant worker who dies while on a drunken binge.

The people are not tragic; they are presented -- present themselves -- as tough and stubborn, and even though it is those qualities (coming up against too much power, no-win situations) that kill them, we admire their strength (while wishing they had more survival smarts and slyness).

One story is a knifeblade dripping bitterness, "Worm". This was written at the request of Maracle's 3-year-old son, and is effect is a true story, bitterness transfigured by wit into weapon. "Who's Political Here?" probably comes from Maracle's personal experiences as a young revolutionary/rebel. Her Bobbie Lee, Indian rebel, period. The story's revolutionary-wife decides to leave revolutionary-hubby in jail overnight, so she can get the laundry done and get a good night's sleep for once.

In this strong book -- perhaps Maracle's best mature writing (because her novels are too woodenly didactic, she jerks her characters around too much and makes them speak manifestos) -- Maracle thoroughly engages us in her lifelong struggle against racism and cultural genocide. There is no compromise here, but no strawman targets are set uip for easy knockdown blame, either.

Reviewed by Paula Giese, editor, Native American Books website, http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/books/bookmenu.html