From Booklist
In Littlecrow-Russell's debut collection, she confronts the issues affecting contemporary Indians head-on, eschewing the more mellow territory of powwows and traditional dancers. A friend wanted to see Indian ruins, "So I drove him past HUD houses and boarded trailers, / Beer bottles and blood drops, / And a three year old girl huffing glue / From a brown paper bag." A grandfather shares "ancient words, delicate as antique deerskin" with his granddaughter; when she stamps her feet and demands he speak English, "his sudden silence wraps around them like a diseased trade blanket." Littlecrow--Russell writes of the shame of welfare and years of low-wage jobs with nothing to show for it, and describes an AIM member "found crumpled in the Dakota snow like the body of a reservation dog." In "Russian Roulette, Indian Style," the bullets are named alcohol, disease, poverty, violence, and assimilation, and "survival is finding the name of the empty chamber." Intense and evocative, Littlecrow-Russell's poems offer much food for thought.
Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
