Don't Know Much About Indians
First-time author Gyasi Ross has assembled a collection of his writings into a book that once opened, will be hard for any reader to put down. Through narrative short stories, vivid poetry and creative illustration, Ross makes it easy and inviting to step into a world that will be new to some readers, and all too familiar to others. These are simple stories that pack a punch sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully and always with one foot planted firmly in the realities of life for Indian people today. Told through the lives of fictitious Native people, each chapter focuses on one moment in time for each character where laughter and tears, victories and disappointments, love and heartbreak reside. But no matter your tribe or race, your religion or worldview, there is much to be learned from Don t Know Much About Indians and readers will be enthralled from cover to cover. --Tacoma WeeklyGyasi Ross's work hits you between the eyes. You're cruising along, reading Don't Know Much About Indians (but I wrote a book about us anyways), published this year by Cut Bank Creek Press. You're thinking that the story or poem is going in one direction, when suddenly it takes a hairpin turn and you find yourself teetering on the edge of your initial set of conclusions, regaining your balance and reorienting your vision along with his. As advertised, Ross decidedly does not know much about Indians at least not the ones depicted in the books written about them by white academics who have studied them. He has opinions about them though. And he knows them, rather than knowing about them. But Ross, of course, has a leg up on those experts who would presume to write about Indians that belies his disclaimers. Thus begins this compilation of what amounts to a series of riveting free-association sessions in the form of poetry, stories and a couple of essays disguised as stories. Ross loves Indians, and by the end of this slim volume, so do we, if we didn't already. We meet Junior, inspired to change his life by an episode of Family Guy; Jen, the kindergarten teacher who gets flack from the school board for her insistence on instructing boys from single-mother households on the fine art of peeing standing up, and Thelma, victim of a fertility-inhibiting STD that scotches her chances at motherhood--or does it? The fictional characters tell factual truths about what has happened to the Indian in the centuries since Europeans first stepped onto Turtle Island's shores. Ross paints a picture of modern Indians, shining a light on their conflicts and contradictions, the cruel twists of fate that snatch their heart's desires just as they seem to be in reach--which in the end makes them simply human. Eight-year-old Jason's mom may have taken too literally her mother-in-law's admonition to keep him near the willows. Michael, a hard-working and insightful college student, illustrates the voicelessness of the Native American male by taking drastic measures when he loses a grading argument with his erudite professor, who knows (or so he thinks) quite a lot about Indians (but not enough to write the voluminous collection of books he has to his credit that he uses as debate ammo against Mike's term paper). Ross's goal was to create some modern mythology and/or archetypes for Native people, the author writes in the last section, About DKMAI (the acronym for his book's title). Patterned on Napi traditional stories told by his maternal grandpa Percy Bullchild, Greek mythology and the Brothers Grimm, the depictions show that far from being mere products of their colonized fate, Indians are in control of their destiny--even when they're not--and demonstrate not only that they're here to stay, but also why. --Indian Country Today Media Network