Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past
Diane Wilson
(Author)
Description
A child of a typical 1950s suburb unearths her mother's hidden heritage, launching a rich and magical exploration of her own identity and her family's powerful Native American past. "One day I realize that my entire back seat is filled with relatives who wonder why I'm not paying more attention to their part of the family story. . . . Sooner or later they all come up to the front seat and whisper stories in my ear."Growing up in the 1950s in suburban Minneapolis, Diane Wilson had a family like everybody else's. Her Swedish American father was a salesman at Sears and her mother drove her brothers to baseball practice and went to parent-teacher conferences.
But in her thirties, Diane began to wonder why her mother didn't speak of her past. So she traveled to South Dakota and Nebraska, searching out records of her relatives through six generations, hungering to know their stories. She began to write a haunting account of the lives of her Dakota Indian family, based on research, to recreate their oral history that was lost, or repressed, or simply set aside as gritty issues of survival demanded attention.
Spirit Car is an exquisite counterpoint of memoir and carefully researched fiction, a remarkable narrative that ties modern Minnesotans to the trauma of the Dakota War. Wilson found her family's love and humor--and she discovered just how deeply our identities are shaped by the forces of history.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Borealis Books
Publish Date
August 01, 2009
Pages
232
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.4 X 0.7 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780873517652
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, speaker, and editor who has published two award-winning nonfiction books, as well as a novel and numerous essays. She received a 2013 Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. Wilson is the Executive Director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.
Reviews
With graceful, clear-eyed prose, Diane Wilson writes her way home. Spirit Car is a generous honor song, raised in celebration of ancestors history too often forgets.
--Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer and Roofwalker This is a moving and poignant tale about the anguish of colonialism and the insidious way it has worked to separate Indigenous Peoples from our roots. Yet within this devastating account also emerges a powerful and uplifting story about returning home.
--Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, author of Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives Diane Wilson had to convince her relatives to tell these moving stories, and now she is determined that they not be forgotten, for 'we are the sum of those who have come before us.'
--Booklist Winner of the 2007 Minnesota Book Award.
Selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program.
--Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer and Roofwalker This is a moving and poignant tale about the anguish of colonialism and the insidious way it has worked to separate Indigenous Peoples from our roots. Yet within this devastating account also emerges a powerful and uplifting story about returning home.
--Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, author of Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives Diane Wilson had to convince her relatives to tell these moving stories, and now she is determined that they not be forgotten, for 'we are the sum of those who have come before us.'
--Booklist Winner of the 2007 Minnesota Book Award.
Selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program.
