The Beadworkers: Stories

by Beth H. Piatote

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Book Overview

Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world

Told with humor, subtlety, and spareness, the mixed-genre works of Beth Piatote's first collection find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return.

A woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship. An eleven-year-old girl narrates the unfolding of the Fish Wars in the 1960s as her family is propelled to its front lines. In 1890, as tensions escalate at Wounded Knee, two young men at college--one French and the other Lakota--each contemplate a death in the family. In the final, haunting piece, a Nez Perce-Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a moving revision of the Greek tragedy Antigone.

Formally inventive and filled with vibrant characters, The Beadworkers draws on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life.

Format:Paperback

Language:English

ISBN:164009427X

ISBN13:9781640094277

Release Date:October 2020

Publisher:Counterpoint LLC

Length:208 Pages

Weight:1.10 lbs.

Dimensions:0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Related Subjects

Artistic Expression Community Support Systems Family Dynamics Gender Roles And Expectations Romantic Relationships Native American Literature Cultural Identity Fiction Literary Literary Criticism

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