Review by Booklist Review
Taffa recounts her childhood and teenage years in New Mexico during the 1970s and '80s. A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, she threads together intimate family troubles--her mother's depression, her father's alcoholism--with highly charged historical accounts, such as when California vigilantes in 1851 "killed 100,000 of my ancestors in the first two years of the gold rush." In doing so, Taffa unravels the traumas carried across generations, and situates her story within a colonial and national history of injustice, exploitation, and dispossession. She also writes of fierce resistance, from the Pueblo revolt of 1680 to her own confrontations with prejudice due to her mixed Indigenous heritage. For all its intensity and weight, the telling is not without joyous moments: dancing to the Temptations with her mother, or perched atop a plateau with her father, their ancestral homelands stretching to the horizon. Yet violence lurks beneath the surface, and arresting passages punctuate the narrative: "A father's job was to control the pace of the world's wounding, to dole out the pain in slightly bigger doses over time." The result of a lifetime, Taffa's remarkable debut stands out from other contemporary memoirs and Native American literature.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Taffa, the director of the MFA creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, debuts with a poignant and harrowing account of growing up in the 1980s as a "Native girl in a northwestern New Mexico town where cowboys still hated Indians." In vivid, nonlinear passages, Taffa describes her childhood, focusing especially on her complex relationships with her parents, who were raised on reservations and had aspirations of assimilation for Taffa and her siblings. Taffa's father, Edmond Jackson, was often in trouble with the law, most notably after his involvement in a fatal car accident; her mother, Lorraine Lopez Herrera, had such all-consuming depression that Taffa feared being home alone with her. Neither parent explored the history of Native American oppression in-depth with Taffa, who researched that history on her own as an adolescent and began to sour on the American Dream she'd grown up idealizing. Throughout, she's careful not to depict her circumstances as unique: "My story is as common as dirt," she writes. "Thousands of Native Americans in California, Arizona, and New Mexico could tell it." What makes Taffa's version exceptional is her visceral prose and sharp attunement to the tragedies of assimilation. This is a must-read. Agent: Samantha Shea, Georges Borchardt. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In her debut memoir, Taffa (editor-in-chief, River Styx; director of creative writing, Inst. of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM) tells a poignant story of the tragedy, oppression, and generational trauma experienced by Indigenous people in the United States. Set in the 1970s and 1980s in New Mexico, Taffa, a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribes, interweaves historical lessons and stories from her childhood as she describes the stress of contending with her parents' wish to assimilate into white American culture and her desire to learn and embrace Indigenous traditions. Lakota/Mohawk actor Charley Flyte narrates with a haunting tone that conveys the heart and sadness of Taffa's story. Her measured, quiet approach stands witness to the heartbreak wrought by assimilation and the tragedy of leaving Indigenous history and culture out of traditional narratives of the United States. VERDICT A must-listen for those seeking a nuanced discussion of the difficulty of balancing the complexities of assimilation with a desire to remain connected to one's culture and history. Audiences who enjoyed Tommy Orange's There There or Terese Marie Mailhot's Heart Berries should take note.--Kaitlyn Tanis
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman with both Native American and Spanish bloodlines seeks to understand the identities at her core. Taffa, a member of the Yuma Nation and Laguna Pueblo, is the editor-in-chief of River Styx magazine and director of the MFA creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Like many Native people, she and her family have faced a concerted effort to remove them from the land, customs, and culture that are their inheritance. In the 1970s, the author's parents made a pointed, if tortured, decision to leave their Quechan family to pursue economic security and some level of assimilation for their children. Spending her childhood and adolescence on the precipice of risk, experiencing anger, resentment, and grief both personal and systemic, Taffa established her claim to her mixed-tribe Native identity. While she asserts that her story is, in ways, as "common as dirt," her narration is both illuminating and instructive. With Native blood and roots that reach to the Spanish conquistadors, the author's experience exposes little-known aspects of the Spanish-Indigenous relationship and the complex nature of intertribal competition and collaboration. She carefully incorporates years of diligent research to reveal unknown or underappreciated facts of history--such as the responses of Native Americans during World War II--highlighting the intricacies of both her family history and the more summarily acknowledged mistreatment of Indigenous groups. Amid such details, the emotional power and cohesion of the author's own narrative can get lost, but Taffa's work is a testament to the power of and need for intergenerational storytelling and a reminder that neither the history, identity, nor future of Native Americans is a monolith. She succeeds in creating a memorable celebration of "our survival as a culture, as well as the hope, strength, and grace of my family." A searching and perceptive Native memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
