num_pages: 107
description: The astonishing powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' AwardWHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted Dont worry you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Din her fathers language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics.from WHEREAS StatementsWHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses treaties and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics prose poems longer narrative sequences resolutions and disclaimers Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories landscapes her own writing and her predicament inside national affiliations. I am she writes a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nationand in this dual citizenship I must work I must eat I must art I must mother I must friend I must listen I must observe constantly I must live. This strident plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
language: English
title: Whereas
publisher: Graywolf Press