Native American Voices: Landmark and Award-Winning Books
Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with a collection of groundbreaking classics, award-winning contemporary works, and unforgettable stories by Native American authors.
by N. Scott Momaday
A young American Indian returning from World War II searches for his place on his old reservation and in urban society.
by James Welch
A troubled 32-year-old Blackfoot Indian returns home to Montana, even though he feels he doesn't belong there.
by Leslie Marmon Silko
On a New Mexico reservation, one Navajo family--including Tayo, a World War II veteran deeply scarred by his experiences as a Japanese POW and by the rejection of his own people--struggles to survive in a world no longer theirs in the years just before and after World War II.
by Louise Erdrich
This collection of interrelated stories of love, betrayal, mystery, and madness concerns men and women bound by blood, legend, tradition, and need.
by Sherman Alexie
Offers a fictional portrait of the characters, themes, and language of the Spokane Indian Reservation. The movie "Smoke Signals," written by Sherman Alexie, was based on stories from this book, primarily "This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona."
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise.”
by Tommy Orange
A novel which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans, with an inheritance of profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide, follows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.
by Joy Harjo
A volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.
by Louise Erdrich
Multi-award-winning author Louise Erdrich weaves together a story of past and future generations, of preservation and progress. She grapples with the worst and best impulses of human nature, illuminating the loves and lives, desires and ambitions of her characters with compassion, wit and intelligence.
by Natalie Diaz
Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds.
by Angeline Boulley
Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.
by Andrea L. Rogers
(Youth) Sissy’s younger brother, Chooch, isn’t a baby anymore. They just celebrated his second birthday, after all. But no matter what Chooch does — even if he’s messing something up! Which is basically all the time! — their parents say he’s just “helping.” Sissy feels that Chooch can get away with anything!
