Thinning blood : memoir of family, myth, and identity / Leah Myers.

Thinning blood : memoir of family, myth, and identity / Leah Myers.

By
Myers, Leah. (Writer)

Publication Date
2023

Publication Information
New York : W.W. Norton & Company,

Physical Description
163 p. : ill.

Subject Term
Indigenous peoples.
 
Indians of North America -- Ethnic identity.
 
Indians of North America -- Folklore.
 
Indians of North America -- History.
 
Indians of North America -- Social life and customs.

Summary
Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family's totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her "culture is being bleached out," offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds: her naive childhood love for Pocahontas, her struggles with the Klallam language, the violence she faced at the hands of a close White friend as a teenager.

Language
English

ISBN
9781324036708


LibraryCollectionCollectionCall NumberStatus
Corner Brook (WCB)Adult NFic IndigenousAdult Non-Fiction Indigenous979.7 M99Checked In
St. John's - A.C. Hunter (SJH)Adult NFic IndigenousAdult Non-Fiction Indigenous979.7 M99Checked In
Stephenville (WST) (Kindale)Adult NFic IndigenousAdult Non-Fiction Indigenous979.7 M99Checked In