From Booklist
This is a harrowing book. Statistics about alcoholism and family violence among dispossessed American Indians fail to show the sheer human suffering it causes and the personal heroism of those who struggle through to an integrated life. Hedge Coke was endowed by her Cherokee father with insights into the Indian way of life, but the pressures of prejudice and her mother's insanity drove her into years of drug and alcohol abuse as well as into abusive relationships. She writes in a stately, unashamed manner of beatings and binges, always connecting her personal sufferings to the larger questions of how Indian people can reclaim their cultural and personal pride and authority. A tragic loss ends the book's story, but far from making it a tale of failure, this final death confirms, through Hedge Coke's presentation, her growth into a profound witness to Indian culture and its deep-rooted spiritual and philosophical values.
Patricia MonaghanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Telling is one thing. That's what we do when we tell stories. But coming to know by experience and telling about it is another. Allison Hedge Coke in Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer shows us 'knowing' in her unique and wonderful way."--Simon J. Ortiz, author of Out There Somewhere. "In this memoir Allison Hedge Coke shows how 'story was part of everything' in her troubled childhood and in the adult world she came to write into poetry. Hers was also a 'childhood forged schizophrenically.' But the molten terror of a girl ringed round with her mother's imagined demons hardens into a shining imagination. Hedge Coke's love of land and people rings out as hard as steel and as true."--Heid E. Erdrich, coeditor of Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community and author of Fishing for Myth. "What I've always admired about Allison Hedge Coke's poetry is her astounding courage. And the ability to seamlessly weave the tobacco fields of childhood with the stark plains and hills of South Dakota. And more than all that--the shining spirit of compassion." --Joy Harjo, Mvskoke poet and musician
