Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0976867656 ISBN 13: 9780976867654

Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books, 2016

Synopsis

Containing the work of 31 poets from 29 tribes, Red Indian Road West is the first poetry anthology encompassing the entire range of Native American experience in California. With more than 720,000 Native Americans, California has by far the largest Native American population of any state and perhaps the most diverse. There are currently more than one hundred American Indian tribes indigenous to California, as well as many Native Americans from tribes nationwide now residing in the state.

Contributors: Indira Allegra, Judi Brannan Armbruster, J.P. Dancing Bear, Nanette Bradley Deetz, E.K. Cooper, Roberta Reyes Cordero, Lucille Lang Day, Natalie Diaz, Carolyn Dunn, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Jewelle Gomez, Janice Gould, Alison Hart, John Hershman, Senna Heyatawin, Dave Holt, Frank LaPena, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, James Luna, Sal Martinez, Shaunna Oteka McCovey, Stephen Meadows, Deborah A. Miranda, Manny Moreno, Catherine Nelson-Rodriguez, Linda Noel, Wendy Rose, Sylvia Ross, Kurt Schweigman, Marlon Sherman, Kim Shuck, Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez

About this title

About the Author

Kurt Schweigman has published and performed as Luke Warm Water in the past. His poetry appears in Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (Michigan State University Press, 2008). He has authored several chapbooks, one of which was awarded an Artists Embassy International Literary/Cultural Award (2013). Kurt was a featured poet at the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge 12th Biennial Poetry Festival (2008) and was the first spoken-word poet to receive an Archibald Bush Foundation individual artist fellowship in literature (2005). He emerged on the poetry spoken-word scene in the late 1990s and has won Poetry Slam competitions across the United States and in Germany. He currently resides in Oakland, California. Kurt is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Tribe.

Review

"Red Indian Road West is an assertion and a statement saying, 'We have always been here. You will never forget us. You cannot do so.' Indigenous people and their insistent passion. Traveling from inland hills to seashores. Their experiences in hot desert and hard mountain. Vital moments to viral moments like no other, but always within the present one. Karuk. Wintu. Konkow. Mojave. Chumash. Costanoan Essalen. Ohlone. And more. And more than we can name but which will always be remembered. And later on, the Lakota, Dakota, Cherokee, Wampanoag, and others, so our indigenous essence will always be momentous. Read, listen, hear, and be assured. Know again and always!"
      -- Simon J. Ortiz, author of Out There Somewhere and Men on the Moon

"An anthology is a community, each voice telling its story in this tribal gathering. Red Indian Road West is a pow wow of sorts. It takes many voices to tell the story of the Native spirit and experience. The voices often are uprooted, yet find place within language. There is camaraderie, wounding, anger, defiance, celebration and disclosure in these wolf songs of the heart."
     -- Diane Glancy, author of Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education
          and Report to the Department of the Interior

"Red Indian Road West draws together work by poets we already know as Native American alongside poets whom we discover have deeply felt Native American ancestry that is profoundly reflected in their poems. One of the best things about this radiant anthology is its illumination of its specific territory: California Native American poetry. These poems live in nature but visit jail cells, casinos, city streets, meth labs, marinas, and San Francisco's Tenderloin; they feel of California with their images of abalone and shellwork, dry grasses, sea lions, earthquakes and fault lines, missions, the 'blue bowl' of Lake Tahoe. Even when they get gritty, scratch us with harsh realities, the poems as a whole approach us with a gentle twist, silky as a blue California sky, deeply spiritual yet of daily life."
     -- Joyce Jenkins, editor of Poetry Flash

"Braiding together like the many rivers of our state, the rich weave of the many California Indian voices in Red Indian Road West crafts its own unique and powerful pattern of poetry that speaks with the tongues of many Native languages and memories, and affirms the continuing presence of the indigenous inhabitants of the Golden State. Together, these poems combine to powerfully flow and deepen our understanding of our state's widely varied indigenous people and the places they know so well, to sculpt a momentous geography in image and verse that's as breathtaking and deeply imprinting as the lay of the California landscape itself."
     -- Ruth Nolan, editor of No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California's Deserts

Edition details

• Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0976867656
• ISBN 13: 9780976867654
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 110
• Editor: Schweigman Kurt, Day Lucille Lang