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"Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe’s writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope." —Elle
The author of the award-winning memoir Red Paint returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States today
Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.
Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art—in particular music—and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 5, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781640096509
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781640096509
- File size: 701 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 22, 2024
In this affecting collection, Coast Salish poet LaPointe (Red Paint) explores how she has navigated colonized spaces as a light-skinned Indigenous woman, and the strength she draws from ancestral knowledge. In “Tulips,” LaPointe laments how she felt compelled to hide her Native American heritage from white classmates in grade school and likens her ruse to how white settlers drained the waterways on which her Skagit Valley ancestors depended: “I changed the landscape of my own identity the same way settlers changed the land they took from us.” LaPointe suggests in “Reservation Riot Grrrl” that though making punk music offers her an outlet for her rage, the scene often assumes whiteness as the norm, as exemplified by an incident in which two white women attempted to get LaPointe’s gig canceled after spotting her wearing face paint and, assuming she was white, accusing her of cultural appropriation. The poignant “First Salmon Ceremony” recounts how LaPointe followed the example set by her white punk friends and became a vegan, only for them to judge her for longing for salmon, a fish with profound cultural significance in Coast Salish tribes: “I grieved for the girl who fell in love with anarchists and tethered herself to their values, for the silence she let herself learn.” Lyrical prose elevates LaPointe’s incisive and heartfelt personal reflections. The result is a beautifully rendered snapshot of contemporary American Indigenous life. -
October 21, 2024
Meditative, insightful, and intimate, this rich collection of essays by the poet and memoirist LaPointe is a compelling and elegantly written journey of introspection and cultural contemplation. The book opens with an homage to LaPointe's Coast Salish great-grandmother and her quest to preserve and celebrate the art and music of her people through a commissioned symphony. LaPointe immediately draws a through line to her own deep connection with modern punk and grunge music. The essays that follow are explorations of heritage and identity through a deeply personal lens. Through absorbing prose and by drawing on both her family's history and her own experiences, LaPointe examines topics both personal and societal as a way to understand herself and her place within her culture more deeply. From grief to coming of age to her experiences with colorism to witnessing the takeover of the environment of her ancestors for the sake of tourism to finding connection through punk rock, these essays illuminate the complexity and beauty of self-discovery.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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