“It’s strange to me how people always want me to be an “authentic Indian.” When I say I’m Haudenosaunee, they want me to look a certain way. Act a certain way. They’re disappointed when what they get is . . . just me. White-faced, red-haired. They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create Indians who could blend in like me. But now they don’t want me either. I’m not Indian enough.”
“The Invisible Indians,” Shelby Lisk
The above is a quote from a new anthology titled #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women, by Charleyboy and Leatherdale, eds. I’ve only sampled sections from the book so far but it looks like a good and perhaps important read.
The book addresses the prejudices and expectations faced by native women, especially young women. Purposefully eclectic and sprawling, it tries to show the diversity and complexity of native female identity. It does so through form as well as content. Poetry here sits next to scholarly writing, illustrations and graphic design. The whole experience of the book seems to be perfectly in tune with digital identity. The anthology quotes from Twitter and one chapter adopts the layout of Instagram which should please a younger readership who is as much, perhaps more, at ease with social media than conventional books.
I’m definitely putting the book on my “to-read” list and you will probably see more about it here on the blog in the future.