Native American Voices

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we are proud to feature ten works by Native writers from around the country. Among the tales told here: an ex-con finds work at a doughnut shop, where he confronts the meaning of honor culture; struggling with identity, a young woman feels forced to defend her Indianness; watching her lover sleep, a woman imagines her body as a colorful canvas: “her navel is a charcoal bowl of figs”; the tension between modern life on the rez and the “old ways” espoused by his stepfather pervades the home of the young narrator. And in a verse from the final piece, the poet writes, “Grandmother drives up in her pickup. Stay, she says, for the singing,” and what could be better advice? Stay, and let these lovely, searing, humorous, brilliant pieces sing to you.