Living on the borderlines Stories

In her first story collection, Michal, of Seneca descent, offers powerful images of indigenous life on and off the reservation juxtaposed with painterly descriptions of the natural world. In the opening story, a Mohawk man gazes across the St. Lawrence River, pondering why borders have been forced on his people when such lines never mattered as they traveled from one village to another. A Haida totem carver and his wife, a weaver, are held together by their art and the traditions that infuse their lives, even though she is white. Cultural traditions passed on for generations are woven into each story, whether they are fiercely honored or carelessly discarded in an attempt to fit into the modern, nonindigenous world. This is most graphically described in a story of four siblings raised in a Seneca household who, after their mother's death, finally meet the sister who was given up for adoption as an infant and who was never told of her Seneca heritage. Enlightening and thought-provoking, Michal's stories are a pleasure to read and absorb.--Deborah Donovan Copyright 2019 Booklist

The stories in Michal's mixed debut feature the people of the indigenous American community: those who live on and off the reservation, those who are deeply concerned with preserving a collective memory, and those who have lost touch with their cultural origins. In "The Long Goodbye," there's Nala, whose elderly grandmother's deteriorating mental state is likely a direct manifestation of an adolescence spent in an assimilation school. In "A Song Returning," when Mia discovers a cache of her recently deceased mother's letters to Gabriella, the daughter she had to give up for adoption, she becomes determined to find her youngest sister. Mia then makes a reappearance in "Nothing but Gray," in which Gabriella goes to visit her birth family and both parties discover neither is who they hoped the other would be. The author can be a bit heavyhanded with her intentions, and so her best and most effective stories are the ones where she is able to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma in more subtle ways, such as "The Crack in the Bridge," in which a woman can't stop seeing muskrats everywhere she goes, and "Phillip," in which the town outcast takes in a young Native girl. Though uneven, Michal's debut is thoughtful and generous, capturing the fraught experience of being Native American in the modern U.S. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.