Mother

mother is a moving exploration of self-identity and family. In poetry and prose, m.s. RedCherries weaves together oral histories and family lore to construct a portal for a separated family reconstructing a shared history of love, rich cultural heritage, systemic injustice, and loss. As a child, the narrator is removed from the Native American reservation on which her family lives and where they remain after the young girl is adopted by non-Native parents. As an adult, the narrator's voice, and the voices of her immediate family, create a multidimensional, nonlinear narrative that reveals truths acquired and intrinsic ("I can't understand your words but I know what you are saying."). mother is unique, deviating from rules of form, time, and space to best serve the narrative and the larger considerations it addresses ("I fell asleep and woke up a thousand years later and a thousand / years before"). Despite the deep loss threaded throughout, this debut collection beats with resilience and vitality. As m.s. RedCherries writes, "It was the stories that brought us back to life and kept us alive forever and ever."

Cheyenne poet RedCherries debuts with a potent and immersive narrative work about a Native American woman raised by non-Native parents and her journey back to her birth family. Addressing the systemic oppression of Indigenous populations, the collection opens with references to a child being sent to a residential school, and her mother dying in a mental institution as a result. Elsewhere, a queer woman returns to the reservation to some consternation from residents, until the community drops its bigoted beliefs, at which point she is revered: "A union of two Cheyenne women was understood to/ be sacred because Cheyenne women are sacred." One of the standout poems, "engine injun," tells the story of a Cheyenne woman who travels to San Francisco in 1969 to take part in a large powwow and learns about the part-Native heritage of Neil Armstrong, who lands on the moon that very night. Elsewhere, a speaker addresses her mother with awe, "You would wake up, brush your hair, put on your denim jacket and become the 1970s cowboy everyone wanted to be." The collection celebrates this mother, who was the speaker's connection to the Cheyenne world and was taken from her at a young age. The result is a confident and arresting account of loss and the search to rebuild community and identity. (July)