Susan Power (1)Kirja-arvosteluja

10. A Council of Dolls – Mona Susan Power - 2023
– library

This is the story of three generations of a family of Lakhota and Dakhota women and the dolls they loved. Like the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, each doll has been so loved that they have become real, with opinions and wisdom to share with their girls.

Each of the three generations of woman is the victim of trauma – imposed by whites physically exterminating Natives through massacres and culturally exterminating them through Reservations and Indian boarding schools. In turn, the children of those victimized are often traumatized by family members who have survived these disasters, but are changed that they can no longer nurture their families as they turn to alcohol and anger to survive.

We first meet Sissy and her doll Ethel, a black Thumbelina doll. Sissy’s father has chosen the black doll for her as she is closer in hair and complexion to Sissy than the blonde haired white Thumbelinas and no native version exists. Sissy’s mother is an activist, but her anger terrifies her daughter. Sissy's mother was torn from her family and sent to an Indian boarding school. Her mother’s mother saw massacres. There is a fourth woman who doesn’t identify herself, merely a voiceless ghost covered by the horrific marks of her death

I’ve read novels and non-fiction accounts of the forced submissions and massacres of the Indians wars, as the whites contorted the natives into smaller and smaller boxes. But when I’ve read of an incident like the Wounded Knee Massacre, while I am totally saddened, I had never considered the inter-generational trauma caused by such events – and then the cumulative trauma endured by the next generation as the assimilation/annihilation continues. The incidents are never over, but continue on and on to this day as sacred places and respect are removed from these people.

Telling these stories through the cross-cultural little girls’ love for their dolls has opened my eyes. 4 stars

Woven with myths and legends, many of the intriguing stories are continually blindsided by cruel, mean, and evil Bad Magic.

Favorite characters are Harley Wind Soldier, Pumpkin, Herod Small War, and Chuck Norris.

The two kinds of Grass Dancing are fascinating: flatten the grass or move with spirit.

"You are the Medicine Hole" still a mystery.

Even more magic deaths skimmed after dog slaughter and feast.

Time sequences quite confusing.

The Council of Dolls illustrates how trauma can be passed from one generation to the next. The trauma here is the result of the treatment of the indigenous people of the Dakota and Lakota tribes by the U.S. government, which first took their livelihood (by destroying the buffalo), then their land, and then their children. The experience of the native children in the boarding schools was horrendous, both in theory and practice. The idea was to destroy their culture and replace it with white, European culture. We witness the result of the first two generations' indoctrination on the third generation, during the 1960's, when children are no longer shipped to boarding schools, but suffer the results of their parents and grandparents experiences.

The dolls of each of the three women bear witness to the trauma. Having loved my own dolls in childhood, it was easy to relate to this relationship with a pretend being.

The first three parts of the book detailing each girl's experience, are moving and cohesive. The last part, unfortunately, seems almost like it belongs to another book. The author switches from third person to first person, and it seems almost autobiographical. I would give the first three parts 5 stars; the last part, 3 stars. I wish the author had found a less awkward way to end the story.

Fascinating and moving. Three Native American women [three generations] and how their lives are affected, mostly badly, with an indictment of wrongs against their people, especially the Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania, who tried to wipe their culture from them. Their dolls serve as protectors and consolation.

I really liked the first 3 parts of this book. There are three narratives with their dolls which worked for me. Even though I was familiar with the Indian schools, it's still hard to hear what our government did to the children of the Native American tribes . The fourth part didn't resonate as well for me but still overall, I am glad that I listened to this book.½

DNF. Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power
reader: Isabella Star LaBlanc
OPD: 2023
format: 11:15 audible audiobook (304 pages in hardcover)
acquired: October 10 listened: Oct 10-15 (listened to 2:57)
rating: 2
genre/style: Novel theme: Random audio
locations: Chicago and South Dakota
about the author: American author, member of the Stand Rock Sioux Tribe, born in Chicago (1961)

I think three hours is enough. I wasn't at all interested in the way this was told. It just felt really simple and unrewarding.

The premise is generations of Native Americans, beginning in Chicago in the 1960's, and going backwards. The first narrator is a very young child, using very simple language. I made it through that part on audio hoping it would get better when the next narration took over, but it didn't and, already impatient with it, I bailed there.

(This is on the NBA longlist for literature. I feel I should acknowledge that indicates some readers must like this. I don't know what quality the NBA judges saw and liked. I'm not going any deeper into their list.)

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/354226#8263410

Beautiful and wise novel of three generations of Dakhóta women and the dolls that love them. Based in part on Mona Susan Power's family and filled with the strength of love, healing and storytelling.

Three generations of Dakhota women fight for their survival (and mental health) in racist and colonialist America. Spirits embodied in dolls—both the mass produced and the handmade kinds—aid them in this fight.

Despite my longstanding interest in what dolls mean to women, I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, the narrative effectively depicts the hardships associated with the warfare and forced assimilation programs that the U.S government inflicted on the Plains Native Americans. On the other, the wrap-up at the end is just a little too tidy for my tastes. Some parts of this narrative I found astonishingly moving, others just left me cold. Cautiously recommended.½

4.5⭐️

Revolving around themes of Native American history, heritage, identity, trauma and healing A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power tells the story of three generations of Native American women spanning the nineteenth century to the present day.

The narrative is presented to us from the first-person perspectives of Sissy (Jesse), Lillian and Cora. Also sharing their perspectives are the three dolls that bear witness to the sorrows, loss and trauma these three women during their childhood years – their friends, companions, confidantes and source of strength in difficult times- Sissy’s doll Ethel, Lillian’s doll is a Shirley Temple doll she calls Mae and Cora’s is a buckskin doll named Winona.

“We've had forces working to get rid of our culture and beliefs, our way of living, for many generations now.”

Sissy’s mother Lillian is a strong woman, an activist with a volatile temperament whose childhood experiences, both in her family and in school, have cast a long shadow on her present family life. Growing up in 1960s Chicago, Sissy was too young to comprehend that her Lakhota/Dakhota parents belong to a generation of indigenous people (and those who came before them) who were forced to attend schools meant to strip them of their language, their identity and their roots.

Lillian’s mother, Cora is a loving presence in Sissy’s life but has had a difficult life, growing in the Standing Rock Indian Reservation amid tremendous upheaval in the wake of the killing of Hunkpapa Lakhota leader Sitting Bull, and her experiences in an Indian residential school and troubled marriage to Jack, Lillian’s alcoholic father.

“We're used to white folks telling us how lucky we are that they are in our lives, telling us we didn't know how to live until they came along. We're used to being made feel dirty, backward, feeble-minded, lax in our conduct, nasty in our manners-just one tiny hair from being a beast in the zoo.”

The narrative begins with a glimpse into Sissy’s childhood and a tragic loss, the impact of which follows her into adulthood. The following sections follow Lillian’s and Cora’s stories and are set in the 1920s and late 1800s, respectively. In the final segment of the story, we meet Sissy who is now in her fifties and has changed her name to Jesse, as she collates the stories of her mother and grandmother to understand how their experiences are tied together and their experiences have impacted their family through generations – an endeavor that proves to be a cathartic experience that paves the way for personal healing.

I finished this book a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Needless to say, this is not an easy read. Combining fact and fiction, the author has poured heart and soul into a narrative that is powerful in its simplicity, matter of fact yet intimate, insightful and thought-provoking. The use of magical realism and related symbolism to trace the impact of generational trauma in a Native American family through the eyes of the dolls who were their companions is unique and interesting. Initially, the three narratives set years apart, felt a tad disjointed but eventually the three threads are woven into a cohesive and profoundly impactful narrative that highlights Native American history, beliefs and ‘lore and the impact of colonization, the atrocities inflicted upon generations of indigenous people including war and massacres, indoctrination and the horrific treatment meted out to children in residential schools for Native American children and and the hardships generations of indigenous people have endured to preserve their history, culture and heritage.

In her Note, the author talks about her extensive research, her family history and the real people and events that inspired this novel. Overall, I found this to be a heart-wrenching, informative and impactful read that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to those who enjoy character-driven fiction rooted in history.

Many thanks to Mariner Books for the gifted copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

“We've learned that healing the present doesn't only clear waters flowing into the future, recovery also flows backward and alleviates the suffering of ancestors. So they can settle down their tears in dark memories, their guilt and shame, their vengeance. And because Time is our relative, a flexible being that moves through every thought and memory, branching into a million rivers of possibility, healing even one of its streams will eventually heal the world.”


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I received an advance copy of this book. Thank you.

I found this book very interesting. I wasn't at all familiar with the history of Indian Boarding Schools and their horrors.
This book tells the story of three generations of females in a family. It starts with Sissy, as a child, born in 1961. Her mother is volatile and mercurial in her temper. Sissy learns to be as quiet and unnoticeable as possible. Her dearest friend is her doll Ethel, who whispers to her and guides her.
The next section is Lillian, as a young girl, born in 1925 (mother of Sissy). Not only is she and her sister forced to go to an Indian Boarding School across the country, but her other siblings go to another. Lillian had a beloved doll, who also gave her comfort and advice, but she was strongly encouraged to give it to a dying girl to comfort her. Yet somehow her doll, Mae, finds Lillian, and once again offers her advice and comfort, helping her survive the school.
The next section is Cora, as a young girl, Born 1888, (Lillian's mother) When she was made to go to an Indian Boarding School, it was for 5 years. She too had a doll who offered her comfort and advice, Winona. When she got to the school, Winona was taken from her and thrown into a large burning fire pit, yet she too managed to get back to Cora.
The last section circles back to Sissy as an adult. She unboxes her doll, her mothers, and grandmother's and is flooded with memories and discoveries.
Parts of this book were hard to read. I found young Sissy's hard. The dolls clearly played a very important role in the story. Occasionally, the dolls would take over the story telling and were very active, other times they were there as observers. The thought of this separation and the deliberate mission to erase all the "Indian" out of these children is horrible to think about. I am so sorry that this was part of our history and for so long.

This is more a collection of interconnected stories than a novel, in form. Some of them can easily stand alone. We progress backward (an oxymoron that says exactly what I mean) chronologically with each section until the final two chapters which circle back to where we began. New bits of family history are revealed each time, helping the reader to shed preconceived notions and understand certain characters with compassion. One brilliant example is the case of Jeannette McVay, whom we first meet as a disenchanted white woman who comes to the reservation to study a culture she views as more in tune with the natural world and spiritual realm than her own. She embarrasses herself with her misguided attempts to fit in, to "turn native", yet eventually she does become a respected member of the reservation community and brings about a very moving reunion/reconciliation. Life---it's complicated. There are heroes and villains on both sides of the cultural divide here, and the stories illustrate how easily things can go wrong whether one is trying to preserve a culture or subdue it. However, they also prove that sometimes things can unexpectedly go quite right, even when the odds are against it. I absolutely loved this book, and will seek out more of Powers' work.

2.10.2019: this book is better on the re-read, because you can find rich details and tons of story threads that may have passed you by the first time. This is a beautifully melancholy book.

K-1

One of the reasons I write "reviews" is to help jog my memory down the road when I might want to reread a book or mention it in relation to another book. But then there are stories so immediately embedded in my brain I know I won't need any reminders no matter how long it's been since I first read it. The Grass Dancer is one of those stories. It was also one of those where I would read a passage I wanted to bookmark but couldn't make myself stop reading long enough to do so.

I loved how the story started off in 1981 with Charlene Thunder and Harley Wind Soldier, then progressed in reverse chronology, until the story of Red Dress in 1864. The story then circles back to Charlene Thunder in 1981 before concluding in 1982. Through the young Sioux's ancestry, showing how their paths have been influenced and affected by the events set in motion before they were born. Anna/Mercury Thunder! Right up till her backstory was revealed, I couldn't believe how much she'd gotten away with, how much pain she'd inflicted for personal gain. But her story deeply affected me, made me question how many of us in her position would choose power over pain, revenge over forgiveness? Would she do it differently if she could step away and see the whole picture? Hindsight and all that.

Highly recommended to readers looking for multi-generational stories by Indigenous authors, especially fans of Louise Erdrich.

4.5 stars½

Challenging but worthwhile exploration of some of the historical, mystical, and generation influences on the Lakota of the northern plains. I've enclosed (in the copy I released via bookcrossing) printouts of a couple of brief reviews that I wish I'd read before I read the book as said reviews would've helped me understand what I was getting into better.

Native American tales told in reverse chronological order. Lots of myth and mysticism. Very interesting. I enjoyed it very much. I think it might make for a good book-group discussion.

Grass Dancer doesn't have a plot. It doesn't have a main character. It doesn't have a linear timeline. At best, I would call it a mishmash of stories with interconnected characters, most from the same family. Grass Dancer as a whole is a shape shifter. With multiple points of view bouncing from first person to third and timelines that are all over the place (1981, 1964, 1935, and 1969 are important dates), it is hard to stay focused on the main purpose of the story. What I found most disheartening is that I would grow attached to a character (like Pumpkin) and then the story would move away from him or her. Most characters came back, but in impersonal ways. Wait until you read what happens to Pumpkin! This is not to say I didn't enjoy Power's writing. She inserted some surprises along the way that I wasn't expecting and she stayed true to the cultures, legends and myths of the Sioux Indians which I appreciated.

A compelling collection of stories, some fictional and others historically true, by an urban Native American woman.

Susan Power is a Dakota Woman who has lived most of her life in Chicago, while remaining strongly connected to her identity as a Native American. In this book she tells the stories about herself and other urban Indians. Whether fictional or true, her stories are quirky and insightful. They prove that although many Native Americans now live in cities, they have not assimilated and disappeared.

I always find short stories hard to review, especially when they are as varied as Power’s. There is no unifying plot to describe, and I simply can’t write about each story. All I can do is provide the flavor of a few of them. A common theme is Indians holding on to their identity as they adapt and cope with urban living. All the stories contain unexpected elements that sharply reveal the complexity of actual human experiences. Bits of an Indian version of magical realism surface here and there.

Read more: http://wp.me/p24OK2-10b

Right from the beginning, I knew that Susan Power's The Grass Dancer was a book I never would have picked up on my own. Though I'm generally up for reading about any culture, I've been burned by a couple about Native Americans, so I'm hesitant to read them. Still, that's not something I'm proud of and is certainly no reason to write off all of those books, so, when this showed up in Sadie Hawkins, I figured I'd give it a try. While I didn't precisely dislike The Grass Dancer, I didn't really like it either, and I definitely did not understand it.

The Grass Dancer is a strange novel from a narrative perspective. Power uses multiple perspectives, varying from chapter to long chapter. Some of the perspectives are in third person and others in first. Since I read the book in chunks by chapter (seriously, they're long), I can't say for sure how unique the voices are in the first person chapters, but it pretty much all read like the same narrator to me. As such, I found the shifts in narration confusing.

Shifting from third to first person isn't all that weird though. Plenty of books do that. What not as many books do is jump around in time while switching perspectives. The book opens (with no year ascribed, then goes to 1981. From there, the narrative keeps jumping backwards years at a time, all the way to 1935, at which point it finally hops back to the early 1980s. WHUT.

Each chapter is a somewhat self-contained narrative and, taken individually, some of them were quite interesting and would have made decent books if built out more. Both the 1981 story, involving Pumpkin, one of the only female grass dancers and one of the best regardless of gender, and the 1964 story about Crystal Thunder, which is about her falling in love with a white man. Race and culture and identity and romance are the main themes, and I'm totally all for that. Some of the other narratives, the one of Red Dress most especially, bored me.

Taken as a whole, though, I have no freaking clue what to make of this book. Why did it go backward? Why make it so difficult for me to piece together how everyone's related? To follow this, I would have had to build out a family tree and keep track of names. As it is, I think I got the broad strokes, but missed the more subtle impacts the earlier timelines had on the later. Having finished, I really have no clue what I was meant to get out of this novel. What I consider the main plot, the frame story, seems, to me, unresolved and unsatisfying. Basically, I just don't get it.

So there you go. I don't think this was a book for me, and I don't think I did it justice because I am baffled.

I read this book ages ago, re-read it a couple of years later. I haven't picked it up in a while, and I'm almost afraid to. It's a story of a Native American family through several generations. There are a lot of fantasy and imagined elements that I worry I might not find as captivating as I did when I was younger, and had just visited the Badlands of South Dakota.
There is one scene that has made a permanent imprint on my imagination. A group of young friends drive through the black hills during a rainstorm, after performing a grass dance. Power so perfectly described the scene I can hear the voices, taste the rain, and smell the damp old car even years after I read the passage.

I recommend this if you like Louise Erdrich's books, or have a liking of fantasy elements in literature.

From the 1980's we go back through the history of two Sioux families in North Dakota exploring the connections as the myth that is Red Dress and Ghost Horse's story affects their descendants.

Taking in approximately one hundred years of North American Native history this does have an episodic feel as Susan Power's takes us back through time, highlighting certain critical events in the lives of the families. There are strong characters here and I would love to learn more about the lives. This is a good book but slightly disjointed and some sections and stories are stronger than others.

I did enjoy this book and the stories Power's tells. Obviously she has great respect for history and Native American heritage. I would definitely read more of her work.

At first, The Grass Dancer seems like just another ill-fated love story, but as the author traces the history of the passage of power from mother to daughter and back through the matrilineal line, the story is transformed into a declaration of a people's recovery of their heritage, learning through pain to find their own inner strengths. (review based on memory from reading more than 20 years ago)
ETA: reread in 2014 for a book club. This book engendered lots of enthusiastic discussion, but several people took notes while they were reading to help them keep relationship lines clear. Spiritual power is not specifically linked to a family line, or to women (Herod Small War lives surrounded by power, and Margaret Many Hands helps her grandson see the moon). This is more a cautionary tale of one woman's misuse of spiritual power, and wanting to pass this misuse on to her daughter or granddaughter. Both of them, as young adults, recognized that they needed to escape that.
You can also analyze the book's presentation of relationships between whites & Dakotas. Young people interested in someone from the other culture were always told "we don't do that", and yet in all generations there was a great deal of intermingling.
The story line summary doesn't really recognize the role of Red Dress, why she is trapped as a ghost in this world, how her attitude seems to change from being vengeful (Anna "had seen her kneeling beside a fire feeding it with objects stolen from her victims" p.222) to protective (Calvin "thinks she's concerned and wants to keep me out of trouble" p. 204).

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. Power—who is herself a Standing Rock Sioux—writes about contemporary Native Americans who have left reservations for cities (especially Chicago) and universities in the early-to-mid-20th century, and about their children. I especially enjoyed the tale about the tiny statue of St Jude coming to life and learning Lakota, and the story about the young Indian woman who goes to Harvard and discovers the spirits of the other Indians who have been there before her. As is the case with all short story collections, some were more successful than others, yet all of them feel easily and inextricably linked to one another by Power's clear and lucid prose.½

confusing. goes back in time further and further until it comes back. By that time, I already forget the names of the main characters½

Power's first novel is an unusual mélange of history and fantasy, tradition and modernity, and though its backwards-looking chronology is intriguing in a Memento-like way, it never captures the power and intrigue of its opening moments and ends up being ultimately more forgettable than impressive.

The novel opens with the enigmatic young girl Pumpkin, en route to college and taking one last tour of Midwestern powwows in an effort to keep in touch with her Native American routes. She impresses the young dancer Harley and they share a night that is captured in beautiful, ethereal writing. The next morning, Pumpkin is killed in a car accident, but instead of charging forward with how Harley reacts to the tragedy, the story plunges backwards to the roots of his family tree -- a family that is similarly haunted by the untimely death of his brother and father.

The web of narratives is impressive, and for the most part, Power handles each story well, but the novel's great weakness is that not every tale is nearly as interesting as the opening one. Pumpkin as a character exudes a liveliness and presence that even the malevolent magic woman Mercury Thunder can't match up to, so while the stories deeper in the history become more explanatory and revealing, they are not nearly as compelling.

Also uneven is Power's treatment of Native culture. There is a clear reverence for Native history and an expectedly ambivalent relationship to the reservation on which the novel takes place, but with the past feeling just as tainted with both internal and external evil as the present, there doesn't seem for Power to be an alternative to the reservation. As such, while the novel wants to make a provocative comment on what life is like for the modern Native American, it falls short and often settles for stereotypes and expected tropes instead of real, original commentary.

While the novel delves confidently into history, Power's greatest strengths lie in her ability to address the present, and she is at her best when she is remaining somewhat mysterious. Unfortunately, in a novel where the layers get deeper and deeper, the closer it gets to the end, the less satisfying it becomes. One longs instead to know far more about what happened AFTER chapter one, a story that remains untold and a promise that remains unfulfilled.