Review by Choice Review
Turtle Lung Woman was a Yuwipi practitioner, healer, and great grandmother of author Red Shirt (American studies and English, Yale). Red Shirt brings together the remembrances of Turtle Lung Woman's teachings and stories with important archival and ethnological information from a variety of sources: words of songs recorded by Frances Densmore, Lakota language texts, and the collaborative works of James R. Walker and George (Long Knife) Sword from the Colorado Historical Society. The story encompasses many details of approximately 80 years of everyday Lakota life (pre-1868 through 1941), with emphasis on ceremonies and activities of women. Sponsored by the Endangered Language Fund (Yale Univ. Department of Linguistics), this book is a valuable contribution to narratives about Native life incorporating indigenous language. The Rood and Taylor Lakota orthography is used; a pronunciation guide is provided. An index would be most useful, but regrettably, none is provided. This book would be of interest to students and academics of all levels in linguistics, ethnography, ethnomusicology, history, women's studies, American Indian studies, religion, and philosophy. V. Giglio Florida Atlantic University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this "prequel" to her own growing-up story (Bead on an Anthill: A Lakota Childhood), Red Shirt lets readers listen in as her mother, Lone Woman, recounts her life and that of her grandmother, Turtle Lung Woman. With her fluid incorporation of her mother's Lakota phrases and songs, Red Shirt, a Yale professor of American studies and English, brings to life Lakota language, lore and history from the mid-19th century, "when things were still steeped in the old ways," to the mid-20th century, when "the world was changing daily." Details of Lakota life in South Dakota and Nebraska (such as the momentous adoption of canvas rather than buffalo hide moccasins) are etched with clarity, as are the consequences of larger historical forces. A medicine woman, Turtle Lung Woman lived among Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and Sitting Bull. She was 28 when the U.S. government forced the Lakota to move to a reservation in 1879, and she recalls hearing about Wounded Knee in 1890. Family marriages and births, Lakota standards of behavior, the practice of medicine women and "their own legends about how they came to be" mingle harmoniously in this dual memoir. Red Shirt does not lecture; rather, her vivid, simple prose turns the reader into a witness. "I was there and I remember," she writes, and readers will feel that way, too. (Apr. 18) Forecast: Though the book is written for a general audience, women's studies scholars, anthropologists and ethnologists should be interested as well. Campus bookstores in Western states should stock up. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
