Customer Reviews

X-Indian Chronicles: The Book of Mausape

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this is one of the best books i've read in a long time! the ending blew my mind! amazing work.

In X-Indian Chronicles, Thomas Yeahpau, a Kiowa, gives us a fascinating collection of interwoven short stories and poems that center on the lives of four young American Indians growing up on the Rez today. Yeahpau calls them X-Indians because they "belong to a race that [is] losing its culture and to a generation that [is] losing its mind. (Yeahpau 3)" The stories are connected through the relationships of the four protagonists, though they can be read independently of one another.
The book raises questions about what it means to be an American Indian in a world that has seemingly forgotten that you exist. Do you choose to forget yourself, assimilating into the White Man's World? These characters often find they can't. Though they may no longer know their pasts as American Indians, their heritage still daily affects their lives. They live in the land of their ancestors, but the traditions of their ancestors have not been imparted to them. They don't know how to survive and thrive in the ways their people always have. The stories that served their ancestors so well were never passed on to them. This lack is a hole that they feel, but can not quite explain. They attempt to fill it with drugs, alcohol, and violence, but they are never satisfied.
This work brilliantly displays the difficulties and frustrations that occur when a culture is seemingly disintegrating around those who live in it. Though the book is sad and often heart rending, it is ultimately hopeful. Thomas Yeahpau shows how loss of stories can hurt a culture, but his stories are also a way to fill that gap. They represent a way of dealing with the loss and anger, love and hate, life and death. And that is what stories are all about.