Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Turtle’s Beating Heart
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Low, Denise Dotson
BIRTHDATE: 1949
WEBSITE: https://deniselow.net/
CITY: Lawrence
STATE: KS
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-low-85442717/ * https://deniselow.net/about/ * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/denise-low * https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/denise-low * https://www.kansaspoets.com/laureate/02_low/about_low.htm
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 79102328
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n79102328
HEADING: Low, Denise
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670 __ |a 30 Kansas poets, c1979 (a.e.) |b t.p. (Denise Low) p. 80 (lecturer, Kansas U.)
670 __ |a Words of a prairie alchemist, c2006: |b t.p. (Denise Low) epcn IBC record (Denise Weso Low)
953 __ |a bd03 |b lh22
PERSONAL
Born 1949 in Emporia, KS; married Tom Weso.
EDUCATION:University of Kansas, B.A., M.A.; Wichita State University, M.F.A.; University of Kansas, Ph.D., 1997.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Poet, publisher, and teacher. Lawrence Arts Center, 1996-2014; Mammoth Publications, co-publisher, 2003–; Association of Writers & Writing Programs, board member and board president, 2009-13; Baker University, Baldwin, KS, faculty, 2011–.
MEMBER:Associated Writers and Writing Programs.
AWARDS:Kansas Poet Laureate, 2007-09; Kansas Notable Book Award; Plains Indian Ledger Art Project, NEH Faculty Fellowship, 2010-11.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays and poems to literary journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, New Letters, Yellow Medicine Review, Conguries, North American Review, Northwest Review, Midwest Quarterly, Connecticut Review, New Letters, Kansas City Star, North Dakota Quarterly, and Numero Cinq.
SIDELIGHTS
Poet and teacher Denise Low is the Kansas 2007-2009 Poet Laureate. She was born in 1949 in Emporia, Kansas and grew up in Flint Hills. She is also a writer, educator, publisher, and critic, and has published more than twenty-five books and hosts a blog where she critiques poetry and writers. She is a member of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs, and was elected president in 2011. She has taught at Baker University, University of Richmond, University of Kansas, and Haskell Indian National University. Low writes reviews and essays, which have appeared in New Letters, Kansas City Star, North Dakota Quarterly, and Numero Cinq, has edited two editions of Kansas Poems of William Stafford, and has collected commentaries about Kansas-related poets in Ad Astra Poetry Project: Kansas Poets.
In 2017, Low published The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival, part of the “American Indian Lives” series. In the book, Low searches for the roots of her Delaware (Lenape) Native American ancestry. Her Kansas maternal grandfather, Frank Bruner (1889-1960) was part of the tribe whose ancestors left Manhattan after relinquishing it to the Dutch in 1626. Various clans (Wolf, Turkey, and Turtle) existed but there was no central tribal identity. Bruner and his family were forced to move around the plain states and eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri. In the early 1900s, his people, along with many other ethnic and religious groups, were violently attacked by the Kansas Ku Klux Klan. Bruner was also able to avoid placement in the mandatory Indian boarding schools perpetrated by the U.S. government. The emotional trauma led to substance abuse. Low learns how her grandfather suppressed his non-European heritage and built up his German and Irish nationalities, kept the secret of his shame and loss, and kept his distance from his grandchildren. He believed that his isolation and no mention of his family’s Delaware ancestry would protect them from violence and discrimination. “While well intentioned, this tactic had long-term implications for his descendants,” observed John R. Burch in Library Journal.
For the book, Low traveled around the state collecting similar stories of people with Native ancestry and backgrounds. Along the way, she became closer to her deceased mother and grandfather and realized the tremendous strength they needed to endure discrimination and shame. In Kirkus Reviews, a writer called the book: “An engagingly written mix of research, reportage, and memoir, infused with the passion of discovery.” Booklist contributor Deborah Donovan noted how Low “was inspired to research and write this remarkable story of her long-buried native ancestry.”
Praising Low’s bold steps to trace her family’s heritage, Kim Shuck said online at World Literature Today: “The author is fearless. …Low brings her eye to bear on the less understood experience of her Lenape family. She takes a long and loving look.” Low’s goal with the book was to allow native people to narrate their own varied stories free from overdramatization, misunderstanding, and Hollywood’s distorted treatment. Low not only preserves the memory of her ancestors, but also provides information and perspective for future generations.
“Low tackles one of the longest diasporas of any US tribal nation, in her searching memoir about family, identity, and history,” said Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers on the Foreword Reviews website. She added that Low speaks profoundly about difficult truths and historical trauma. According to Pamela Miller online at Star Tribune, “Low does Americans with Indian ancestry a valuable service by illuminating the unique and often terrible circumstances and choices their forebears faced. It is that haunting sense of disturbance, like the still-beating heart of the turtle in the gut, that is worth acknowledging and honoring.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 15, 2016, Deborah Donovan, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival, p. 12.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2016, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart.
Library Journal, October 15, 2016, John R. Burch, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart, p. 94.
ONLINE
Denise Low Website, https://deniselow.net (September 1, 2017), author profile.
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (March 2, 2017), Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart.
Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com/ (January 6, 2017), Pamela Miller, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart.
World Literature Today, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/ (May 2017), Kim Shuck, review of The Turtle’s Beating Heart.
Denise Low
Independent Writer & Consultant; Faculty member at Baker University
Baker University The University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas Area 500+ 500+ connections
Connect
Experience
Baker University
Faculty member
Company NameBaker University
Dates EmployedJul 2011 – Present Employment Duration6 yrs 2 mos
LocationBaldwin, Kansas
School of Professional and Graduate Studies
Mammoth Publications
Co-Publisher
Company NameMammoth Publications
Dates Employed2003 – Present Employment Duration14 yrs
Thomas Pecore Weso does artwork, shipping, and planning. I do editing, layout, billing, selection, and planning.
Lawrence Arts Center
Langston Hughes Contest Judge
Company NameLawrence Arts Center
Dates Employed1996 – 2014 Employment Duration18 yrs
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs
AWP Former Board Member and Board President
Company NameThe Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Dates Employed2009 – 2013 Employment Duration4 yrs
LocationWashington D.C. Metro Area
As president, I helped the board of trustees work with the staff to accomplish goals of this writers' service organization of 500+ academic creative writing programs; independent writers; and writing centers and conferences. The staff is just incredible! The AWP puts on a conference for 10,000+ writers and students annually. This was an amazing experience, with review of budget, assessment of program, revision of the strategic plan with new position descriptions and organizational chart, and more.
NEH Faculty Fellowship--Plains Indian Ledger Art Project
Recipient
Company NameNEH Faculty Fellowship--Plains Indian Ledger Art Project
Dates Employed2010 – 2011 Employment Duration1 yr
Director, Plains Indian Ledger Art ledgers--"Wild Hog (Ks. St. Hist. Soc." and "Northern Cheyenne" (Ks. St. Hist. Soc.). See results at the Plains Indian Ledger Art - U.C.- San Diego, Dodge City ledgers.
See more positions
Education
The University of Kansas
The University of Kansas
Degree Name Ph.D. Field Of Study Am. Ind. Lit., Am. Lit., Creative Non-Fiction Prose & Poetry
Dates attended or expected graduation 1991 – 1997
Activities and Societies: 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate; 2008-2013 Board of Directors, (President, Vice President & Conference Chair), Associated Writers & Writing Programs; Woodley Press board; Association of Studies in American Indian LIterature; Plains Indian Ledger Art--Director of four Northern Cheyenne ledgers.
Wichita State University
Wichita State University
Degree Name MFA Field Of Study Creative Writing
BIOGRAPHY
Denise.web.14.Dailey
Denise Low, Kansas 2007-2009 Poet Laureate, is active as a writer, educator, publisher, poet, and critic. Recent books are Mélange Block, poetry based on geologic structures and mixed-blood experiences (Red Mountain Press 2014) and Jackalope , trickster fiction (Red Mountain Press 2016). Low is author of over 25 books. She posts commentary about poets and writers on her blog. Members of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs elected her to the national board in 2008-13, and she served as president of the AWP board 2011-2012. The Poetry Foundation selected samples of her work for its site, where she is listed among Native American poets.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE. Currently, Denise Low teaches for Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies and leads independent creative writing workshops. She has been visiting professor in the Creative Writing programs of the University of Richmond (’05) and the University of Kansas (’08). She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University, where she founded the creative writing program. RECENT PUBLICATIONS. The poem “Two Gates” was selected for the national series American Life in Poetry (ed. Ted Kooser). Recent reviews and essays appear in New Letters, Kansas City Star, North Dakota Quarterly (79.2, Spring 2014) and Numero Cinq. Low’s Natural Theologies: Essays about Literature of the New Middle West (The Backwaters Press 2011) is the first book about contemporary grasslands-region literature. Ghost Stories: From Einstein’s Brain to Geronimo’s Boots (Woodley 2010) won a Ks. Notable Book Award, as well as Words of a Prairie Alchemist (Ice Cube Press 2006) . She edited two editions of Kansas Poems of William Stafford (Woodley 2010). Her collection of commentaries about Kansas-related poets, Ad Astra Poetry Project: Kansas Poets (Washburn Center for Ks. Studies & Mammoth) also won a Kansas Notable Book Award. She and her husband Thomas Weso wrote a photo-biography, Langston Hughes in Lawrence. Other writings, appear in Va. Quarterly Rev., New Letters, Yellow Medicine Rev., Conguries, North American Rev., Northwest Rev., Midwest Q., Connecticut Rev., and others. She holds a 2011-2012 NEH Facuty Fellowship for Tribal College Faculty for research into Northern Cheyenne ledger art. An article co-authored with Ramon Powers on ledger art appears in Kansas History in 2012, and she directs four ledgers for the Plains Indian Ledger Art site (Univ. of Cal.-San Diego). PERSONAL. Denise Low is a 5th generation Kansan of mixed German, British, and unaffiliated Lenape (Delaware) and Cherokee heritage. She grew up in the Flint Hills town of Emporia, where, in high school, she wrote a weekly column for the Emporia Gazette under William L. White. She lives with her husband Tom Weso in Lawrence, Kansas.
Education: Ph.D., English, University of Kansas. Dissertation Honors. Comprehensive examinations over American Indian literature, nonfiction prose, and Loren Eiseley; M.F.A., Creative Writing, Wichita State University, both poetry and fiction classes; M.A., English, University of Kansas, literature option; B.A., English, University of Kansas
Denise Low
http://www.deniselow.com
Jason Dailey
Former Kansas poet laureate Denise Low is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Mélange Block (Red Mountain Press) and Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley Memorial Press, 2010), a Kansas Notable Book Award and recognized by The Circle of Minneapolis as among the best Native American Books of 2010. Low earned her BA, MA, and PhD in English from the University of Kansas, and her MFA from Wichita State University. She is a fifth generation Kansan of mixed British Isles, German, and unaffiliated Delaware (Lenape and Munsee) and Cherokee heritage.
Low served on the board of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs from 2008 to 2013 and served as president from 2011 to 2012. Her book of essays Natural Theologies: Essays about Literature of the New Middle West (The Backwaters Press, 2011) is the first book about contemporary grasslands-region literature. She was guest poet on the Academy of American Poets online forum.
She has been visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Richmond and Kansas University. She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, where she founded the creative writing program. Awards and fellowships are from the Roberts Foundation, Lichtor Poetry Prize, Kansas Arts Council, and Sequoyah National Research Center for study of the works of Yuki poet William Oandasan. She and her husband Thomas Pecore Weso co-publish Mammoth Publications, an independent press that specializes in Indigenous American and Great Plains poetry and literary prose. Her poems have appeared in New Letters, American Life in Poetry, North American Review, Cream City Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Summerset, Blue Lyra, Numéro Cinq, Coal City Review.
poet
Denise Low
Denise Low was born in 1949 in Emporia, Kansas. She received her BA, MA, and PhD in English from the University of Kansas and her MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University.
Low is the author of several books of poetry, including Mélange Block (Red Mountain Press, 2014), Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley Memorial Press, 2010), and Thailand Journal: Poems (Woodley Memorial Press, 2003).
Low, who is of mixed German, British, unaffiliated Lenape and Cherokee heritage, frequently examines Native heritage and the intersection of Native and settler heritages in her work.
From 2008 to 2013, Low was a member of the national board of Associated Writers and Writing Programs and served as president from 2011 to 2012. Low has taught at the University of Kansas and University of Richmond, as well as at Haskell Indian Nations University, where she founded the creative writing program. She currently teaches at Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies in Baldwin City, Kansas, and lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Mélange Block (Red Mountain Press, 2014)
Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley Memorial Press, 2010)
Thailand Journal: Poems (Woodley Memorial Press, 2003)
New and Selected Poems: 1980–1999 (Penthe Publishing, 1999)
Tulip Elegies: An Alchemy of Writing (Penthe Publishing, 1993)
Starwater (Cottonwood Press, 1988)
Spring Geese and Other Poems (University of Kansas Natural History Museum Publications, 1984)
Quilting (Holiseventh Press, 1984)
Denise Low, grew up in the Flint Hills of Kansas, descended from British Isles, German, and Native (Delaware and Cherokee) peoples. She is the 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate, with over 20 published books of poetry, personal essays, and scholarship, including Natural Theologies (The Backwaters Press, 2011) and Ghost Stories: Poems (Woodley 2010 and Kansas Notable Book Award winner).
For over 25 years she taught at Haskell Indian Nations University, and she has been visiting professor at the University of Kansas and University of Richmond. She has awards from the NEH, Sequoyah National Research Center, Lannan Foundation, The Newberry Library, Academy of American Poets, and Ks. Arts Commission.
Her academic books include prose about Native and settler literatures of the middle plains region. She is 2011-2012 president of the national board of the Associated Writers & Writing Programs. Her web site is www.deniselow.com , and she maintains a writing-related blog, http://deniselow.blogspot.com .
More on the Denise Low
Low, the daughter of Francis Dotson and Dorothy (Bruner) Dotson, was born and grew up in Emporia, Kansas, within sight of the Flint Hills. She is a 5th generation Kansan of mixed German, Scots, Lenape (Delaware), English, French, and Cherokee heritage.
Her father was the Democratic Party Lyon County chairman from the 1960s to the 1980s. As a child she remembers his lively discussions with William L. and Kathryn White of the Emporia Gazette and other Republican advocates.
Low began her writing career as a high school correspondent for the Gazette, like her brother David and sister Jane Ciabattari. Her sister Jane is a well-known journalist and fiction writer in New York City.
Dr. Low holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Kansas and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Wichita State University. She has published ten books of poetry and essays and received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Lannan Foundation, Kansas Arts Commission, Poetry Society of America and others. She also publishes reviews and articles about poetry and American Indian Literature.
Dr. Low followed the lead of the first Poet Laureate of Kansas, Jonathan Holden. Dr. Holden initiated a dialogue with communities and schools across the state through televised poetry programs and other appearances. Low continued adding to the Kansas Poets web site (www.kansaspoets.com), created by Greg German, to engage writers and readers of Kansas poetry. In addition, she wrote a weekly column featuring a Kansas poet for the web site, free to Kansas schools, libraries and arts organizations. Ad Astra Project
Dr. Low resides in Lawrence and is married to Thomas Weso. Her children are David Low of Healdsburg, CA; Daniel Low of Washington D.C.; and stepdaughter Pemecewan Fleuker of Lawrence.
*Permission is granted that this page's information can be used by others
to positively promote Kansas Poet Laureate Denise Low.
Denise Low
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Denise Low (born 1949) is an American poet, honored as the second Kansas poet laureate (2007–2009). A professor at Haskell Indian Nations University, Low teaches literature, creative writing and American Indian studies courses at the university. She was succeeded by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg on July 1, 2009.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Publications
2.1 Poetry
2.2 Fiction
2.3 Essays
2.4 Books edited
3 Awards
4 Grants and fellowships
5 References
6 External links
Biography[edit]
Low is the daughter of Francis Dotson and Dorothy (Bruner) Dotson. A 5th generation Kansan of mixed German, Scots, Lenape (Delaware), English, French, and Cherokee heritage, she was born and grew up in Emporia, Kansas, where she began her writing career as a high school correspondent for the Emporia Gazette.[1][2] She attained her bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Kansas, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Wichita State University.
As poet laureate of Kansas,[3] Low continued the efforts of the state’s first laureate, Jonathan Holden, by providing an open dialogue with Kansas poets. Besides appearing at many venues across the state, she established the Ad Astra Poetry Project. Personally contributing to the project bi-monthly via written releases, Low discusses specific notable poets. The Ad Astra project poets are also featured on www.kansaspoets.com.
Low left Haskell Indian Nations University in 2012 after 27 years as an administrator and faculty member. She now teaches classes for the School of Professional and Graduate Studies of Baker University as well as The Writers Place of Kansas City. She writes a regular poetry column for the Kansas City Star, and she is review editor of Yukhika-latuhse ("She tells us stories"), published by the Oneida Nations Arts Program. Individual members of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs elected Low to the national board of directors 2008-2013. She has served the board as conference chair and president (2011-2012).
She runs Mammoth Publications with her husband, Thomas Pecore Weso.
Publications[edit]
Her book of essays Natural Theologies: Essays about Literature of the New Middle West (The Backwaters Press 2011) is the first book of critical essays about contemporary grasslands-region literature. Three books by Low earned recognition from the Kansas State Library and the Kansas Center for the Book as Kansas Notable Books: Ghost Stories of the New West: Prose and Poems (2010); To the Stars: Kansas Poets of the Ad Astra Project (2009); and Words of a Prairie Alchemist: Essays (2007). Ghost Stories was recognized by Circle of Minneapolis as one of the best Native books published in 2010.
Words of a Prairie Alchemist was designated a 2007 Notable Book by the State Library of Kansas. Thailand Journal was named a notable book of 2003 by the Kansas City Star. Low’s other book New & Selected Poems: 1980-1999 was published by Penthe Press. In 2005, she edited the Lawrence Arts Center’s Wakarusa Wetlands in Word & Image for Imagination. She and her husband Thomas Weso co-wrote a biographical work on the poet Langston Hughes.
Low has published over 20 books of poetry and essays and has received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lannan Foundation, the Kansas Arts Commission, the Poetry Society of America and others. Low is also on the National Board of Drectors for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. She reads and lectures regionally as well as nationally.
She has published poetry, reviews, articles about poetry and American Indian Literature in Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Star, American Indian Literature, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Indian Quarterly, New Letters, North American Review, Conjuries, Connecticut Review, Yellow Medicine Review and others.
Poetry[edit]
Mélange Block. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Mountain Press, 2014.
Thailand Journal: Poems. Topeka: Woodley-Washburn University, 2003. Kansas City Star Notable book of 2003.
New and Selected Poems. Lawrence/Middletown, CA: Penthe, 1999. 2nd printing 2007.
Tulip Elegies: An Alchemy of Writing. Lawrence/Middletown CA: Penthe,1993.
Vanishing Point. Wichita/New York City: Mulberry, 1991. Chapbook of poetry.
Selective Amnesia. Stiletto I (Dec. 1988): u.p.
Howling Dog. Chapbook of poetry.
Starwater. Lawrence: Cottonwood Review Press (Univ. of Kansas), 1988.
Learning the Language of Rivers. Midwest Quarterly 38.4 (Summer 1987): 473-510. Chapbook.
Spring Geese and Other Poems. Lawrence: University of Kansas Natural History Museum Publications, 1984.
Quilting. Lawrence: Holiseventh, 1984. Fine-press edition.
Dragon Kite, in Mid-America Trio. Kansas City: BookMark Press-University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1981. Chapbook of poetry.
Fiction[edit]
Jackalope. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Mountain Press, 2016.
Essays[edit]
Natural Theologies: Literature of the Prairielands. Forthcoming, Omaha: Backwaters Press.
Words of a Prairie Alchemist: The Art of Prairie Literature. North Liberty, Iowa: Ice Cube Press, 2006. 2007 Kansas Notable Book, State Library of Kansas.
Langston Hughes in Lawrence: Photographs and Biographical Resources. With T.F.Pecore Weso. Lawrence: Mammoth, 2004.
Touching the Sky: Essays. Lawrence/Middletown, CA: Penthe, 1994.
Books edited[edit]
Wakarusa Wetlands in Word and Image. Lawrence: Imagination & Place and Lawrence Arts Center, 2005.
Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Co-ed. with Peter G. Beidler. Special issue of American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28.1 (2004), UCLA.
The Good Earth: Three Poets of the Prairie: Paul Engle, James Hearts, William Stafford. Eds. Denise Low, Robert Dana, Scott Cawelti. North Liberty: Ice Cube Press, 2002.
Kansas Poems of William Stafford, with an introduction. Topeka: Woodley (Washburn Univ.), 1990. 7th printing 2007.
A Confluence of Poems, a school edition. Lawrence: Cottonwood Review Press, 1984. 2nd printing, 1985.
Confluence: Contemporary Kansas Poetry. Lawrence: Cottonwood Review Press (Univ. of Ks.), 1983.
30 Kansas Poets. Lawrence: Cottonwood Review Press (Univ. of Ks.), 1979. 2nd printing, 1980.
Awards[edit]
Kansas Poet Laureate, selected by the governor and Kansas Arts Commission, July 2007 – 2009
Prairie Alchemist selected for Kansas Notable Book by Gov. and Ks. State Library, 2007.
Lawrence Arts Commission Grant, to Ice Cube Press, for Words of a Prairie Alchemist: The Art of Literature, 2005.
Wordcraft Circle Annual Gathering Service Award, Haskell and KU, March 2003.
Phoenix Award, Lawrence Arts Commission, individual award in literary arts, 2000.
Lawrence Arts Commission Grant, to Penthe Press for New and Selected Poems, 1999.
Seaton Poetry Prize, Kansas Quarterly, 1991. "Dragonflies."
Roberts Foundation National Writing Competition, 1989, 2nd, poetry, "Winter Count."
Lawrence Arts Commission City Enhancement and Cultural Exchange Award, for Starwater (Cottonwood, 1988).
Seaton Poetry Prize, Kansas Quarterly, 1988, "Mastodons."
Pushcart Fiction Prize nomination, Redstart, James Mechem, ed. "Queen of Swords."
Council for Advancement and Support of Education Regional Award of Excellence,for Spring Geese and Other Poems (University of Kansas Museum of Natural History Press, 1984).
Academy of American Poets' Pami Jurassi Bush Award, 1983, 2nd, for "Quilting."
Seaton Poetry Prize, Kansas Quarterly (1982). Third place, "Mt. Saint Helens Day."
Lichtor Poetry Prize, Jewish Community Center, Kansas City, 1980, 1st, for "Place."
Pushcart Poetry Prize nominations, Little Balkans Review, Gene DeGruson, editor for "Snakes" and, Naked Man, Michael Smetzer, editor for "Cold" and "Drought."
Grants and fellowships[edit]
Sequoyah National Research Center Fellowship, 2012, to study Yuki poet William Oandasan
National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, 2011-2012, to develop online and text resources related to Northern Cheyenne ledger art relating to 1879 Kansas history
Lannan Fellowship, The Newberry Library, “American Indian Societies, Cultures, and Gender in Midwestern and Eastern North America.” Summer 2001
The Newberry Library, Chicago, Documentary Workshop Fellowship, "Native American Autobiography," 1992.
Kansas Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship in Poetry, 1991. One award every two years to a poet in Kansas, at that time commonly referred to as the “poet laureate” for Kansas. $5000.
Kansas Committee for the Humanities, Summer Seminar for Teachers Grant, "Native American Tribes in Kansas: Cultural Persistence," 1991, seminar director and lead scholar.
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship, Newberry Library, Chicago, "Myth, Memory, and History: Sources for Writing Native American History," 1991.
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship, "Great Traditions in Native American Thought," University of California-Berkeley, 1987.
Kansas Arts Commission Mini-grant: Funding for Summer Workshop, "Writing from Nature," Museums of Natural History, University of Kansas, 1985.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ http://www.kansaspoets.com
Jump up ^ http://arts.state.ks.us/poet_laureate/index.shtml
Jump up ^ http://www.kansaspoets.com/kspoet_about.htm
External links[edit]
Denise Low's web site
Denise Low's blog
Author Denise Low, The Backwaters Press
Woodley Press reviews by Denise Low
Denise Low's Amazon.com author's page
Audio of Denise Low and Kathryn Kysar reading, Live from Prairie Lights, June 16, 2011
Review of Denise Low's Ghost Stories of the New West
Video of Denise Low reading her poem "Two Gates"
About the Author
Denise Low is an adjunct professor for the Master of Liberal Arts program at Baker University, former Kansas poet laureate, and former dean of humanities and arts at Haskell Indian Nations University. She is the author of numerous creative works, including Jackalope, Melange Block: Poems, Natural Theologies: Essays about Literature of the Middle West, Words of a Prairie Alchemist: The Art of Prairie Literature.
PEOPLE
Turtles-Beating-Heart-Book-Cover
Turtle’s Heart Still Beats: The Delaware People, A Story of Survival
Native American author documents her family’s history, survival of the Delaware people
Konnie LeMay • June 15, 2017
Ten generations ago, Denise Low’s Delaware ancestors began a forced journey from their eastern coastal homelands near modern-day Manhattan to escape encroachment and persecution from the amassing Europeans.
The diaspora of the Delaware people would spread them inland, a disaster for keeping the people together and whole.
“After several hundred years of resistance, from the 1500s to the mid-1700s, they were overwhelmed but not finally defeated,” Low writes. “Dozens of Delaware communities continue to exist from the Atlantic Ocean to Idaho and from Canada to the southern plains. Two federally recognized tribes are in Oklahoma and one in Wisconsin. State-recognized Delawares are in Delaware, New Jersey and Ohio. Others meet regularly, including the Kansas Delaware Tribe of Indians near my home in Lawrence.”
By the time the later generations of Low’s family settled in Kansas, a state with a then-prominent Ku Klux Klan presence, a tacit public denial had begun. Not calling attention to Native heritage at the time also meant children would not be removed to boarding schools. The silence was practical, but as with all secrets, reaped consequences.
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Low documents her journey through the family’s past and the Delaware diaspora in her book released this year, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival.
The title evolved from a story told by an Arikara woman, whose grandmother fed her the heart of a freshly killed turtle. A turtle’s heart beats long after it is separated from its body.
“I love that image of survival,” Low said. For her, it illustrated well how the heart of the Delaware people continues to beat.
“All of them adapted to many different conditions,” Low writes. “All are survivors like my family.”
The former Kansas state poet laureate, Low also serves as adjunct professor for the master of liberal arts program at Baker University and is the former dean of Arts and Humanities at Haskell Indian Nations University.
She has written a dozen books of poetry, but this family memoir, which focuses on her grandfather, Frank Bruner Jr., her mother Dorothy Bruner and herself, presented different challenges.
“I rewrote it maybe four times completely. I am grateful to Kimberly Blaeser, Ojibwa, and Matthew Bokovoy, who are editors of the University of Nebraska Press.”
Denise Low, Delaware, Delaware People, Delaware Nation, Lenape, Native American History, Forced Removal, University of Nebraska Press, Native Communities, Blood Quantum, Blood Quantum Criteria, Haskell Indian Nations University, American Indian Heritage, Native American Heritage
Courtesy Tracy Rasmussen/Insight Photography/University of Nebraska Press
Native American author Denise Low writes about her family’s Delaware history in her latest book. “Grandchildren meet their grandparents at the end,” she writes, “as tragic figures. We remember their decline and deaths. … The story we see as grandchildren is like a garden covered by snow, just outlines visible.”
Low found several stories to tell, both the history of the Delaware people and the history of her own family. She tried, too, to insert poems, but finally, after one revision, her editor gave her some sound advice.
“The reader’s mind was ping-ponging back and forth between lyrical and prose and textbook history,” Low said. “The last version, consulting with my editor, he really recommended that I write with one voice. I tried that, and it finally felt right.”
The voice she chose was that of her own history. She follows the trials of her grandfather, his wanderings and chronic pain from a work-related head injury, self-treated, Low surmises, with alcohol.
As his grandchild, the youngest in her family, Low saw only a witty and warm grandfather. The experience of growing up in the household was different for her ambitious and talented mother. Her mother’s dismissal of her Native heritage became a rejection, perhaps, of her fractured family.
Denise Low, Delaware, Delaware People, Delaware Nation, Lenape, Native American History, Forced Removal, University of Nebraska Press, Native Communities, Blood Quantum, Blood Quantum Criteria, Haskell Indian Nations University, American Indian Heritage, Native American Heritage
Courtesy Denise Low
Denise Low’s grandfather, Frank Bruner Jr., as a teenager.
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Low discovered the family’s Delaware heritage during her years-long family research, and she links the denial of that past with problems that persist today. She tries, though, not to judge others’ decisions, especially those made without the benefit of a strong tribal community.
“I can’t judge my mother or my grandfather … on any of the choices they made,” Low said. “My mother and my grandfather didn’t have the strong cultural practices that many tribal nations have been able to offer their members to help shore them up.”
In Kansas at the earlier time, any difference could bring hatred, and Low pointed out one. “My friend John Berry tells the story of his mother.”
When his mother was 10 at school, the children were asked to tell their heritage. John’s mother said, “We’re Choctaw.”
“And that night,” Low continued the story, “somebody drove by and shot up their house.”
In the book, she summarizes another more subtle coercion. “Our parents worried so much about keeping up appearances that it stifled everyone. Official narratives of our family are like the crisp white sheets our mothers ironed weekly, without design or color. We cousins discussed how part of the Midwestern ethos is based on fitting into community, at no small cost to individuals. We discussed the American Indian heritage in our family, how it was suppressed and what that denial cost us to this day.”
Denise Low, Delaware, Delaware People, Delaware Nation, Lenape, Native American History, Forced Removal, University of Nebraska Press, Native Communities, Blood Quantum, Blood Quantum Criteria, Haskell Indian Nations University, American Indian Heritage, Native American Heritage
Courtesy Denise Low
Denise Low’s mother, Dorothy Bruner, at age 16.
Low consulted with her siblings and cousins as part of her research. She felt the weight of her family’s history and that of the Delaware people. “I did pray every time I sat down to do the book. I did offer prayers, and I hope that I represent things as well as possible.”
The book harkens to the Delaware diaspora, and there is another book to be made, Low knows, with all the history and stories that she has gathered.
“It’s important to me to try to articulate some of these historic moments that are lost, pretty much, certainly lost to national consciousness. … There are a few decent Delaware history books that are important sources, but the daily lives of Delaware people, you just don’t hear about.”
By the time Denise Low began to investigate and uncover her own history, she would find in this current era of blood-quantum criteria, pressure for tacit denial of heritage may now come from Native rather than non-Native sources.
“I’m not an enrolled member,” Low said. “Tribal membership is a separate issue from family heritage. If I say I have British Isles heritage, nobody blinks.”
She looks at her grandchildren and wonders what identity they will be allowed to hold. Her husband is an enrolled member of the Menominee of Wisconsin, but with each generation, that “blood quantum” diminishes, even if the ties to their community may not.
“I’m in awe of all Native nations who have sustained their identities and communities for hundreds of years,” Low said. “We are going to need all the strength we have for the next 10, 20, 50 years.”
She knows how that communal strength would have enhanced her family’s own story. “The more you understand about yourself, you’re a more whole person. It has helped me a great deal to find that whole family history. That is the most important thing that I can claim.”
It is a wholeness she hopes to pass on to the next generations.
FROM THE DESK OF DENISE LOW: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO WRITE A MEMOIR?
POSTED BY UNIVNEBPRESS ON DECEMBER 19, 2016 IN GUEST BLOGS | LEAVE A COMMENT
The following contribution is from Denise Low, author of The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (January 2017).
How Long Does It Take To Write a Memoir?
People ask how long it took me to write The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival, a memoir about my family’s Indigenous American heritage. The easy answer is, “All my life.” But few are satisfied with this short answer, but really, it took a lifetime.
From birth I learned the family story. My parents taught values of sharing, listening, and respect for other ethnicities. Their teachings about our origins, though, were vague.
My father occasionally made a comment about my mother’s Native heritage. My mother praised her German and Irish mother’s backgrounds and ignored her father’s. In the 1950s, schools promoted the United States melting pot paradigm, how everyone assimilates into one populace—except for those who do not. In this pre-Civil Rights era, divisions were apparent in my hometown of Emporia, Kansas. Grandfather, with his dark skin, was ignored.
unp-low-fig14
When I started my own family, I was too busy to think about heritage, even as I continued my family’s values in child-rearing practices. “Don’t interrupt,” I would order, and “Sit still and listen.” Mother’s voice echoed in my own. Between ball games I began to dabble in family genealogy because I like history in general.
In my forties, finally, I had time to talk with my parents and older relatives. Mother revealed a trove of photographs stored in the basement. This is where my memoir really began, 1990s, as I saw obvious cognitive breaks in the family myths. My mother claimed her relatives were blond northern Europeans, yet picture albums showed many handsome relatives with black hair and dark skin.
I began informal interviews with relatives and Native friends, especially members of the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma. Oral tradition corroborated documents. Genealogical websites like Ancestry.com provided census records that verified, or dispelled, family assumptions. More years passed.
Algonquin-related names appeared frequently in these annals, and the Delaware identity of the family become more clear. In both New Jersey and Ohio, the family lived on or near Native lands. In earlier centuries, these were refugee camps where related groups of Lenape, Mohicans, and others came together for survival.
I found great allies in cousins who had more photographs and stories. Mi’kmaq author Alice Azure recommended that I speak with Mitchell Bush (Onondaga), who remembered a New Jersey Delaware man who was a Bruner. My preface lists dozens who contributed to the effort, but I had no definite goal beyond recovering the family story.
Joseph Harrington’s book Things Come On: An Amneoir gave me impetus to put fingers to keyboard. Joe, a friend, is a poet and professor at the University of Kansas. His mixed-genre book maps memory of his mother’s life wound into historic events of her time. He coined the word “Amneoir,” a compound of “amnesia” and “memoir.” The term is provocative and fits many histories that are fragmented, suppressed, and ignored. Joe was an ally. In 2011, I created folders on my computer for an electronic scrapbook of images, poetry, prose, and historic quotations. I typed the first paragraph. And the next.
Great good luck occurred in 2012 when I contacted Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser (Ojibwa), a board member of the University of Nebraska Press’s series American Indian Lives. I emailed a query, would she consider endorsing my memoir? She suggested that I consider submitting the book to UNP. I am grateful to her and all others associated with the series: Brenda J. Child, R. David Edmunds, Clara Sue Kidwell, and Tsianina K. Lomawaima. In that first year, Kimberly reviewed and helped with style and structure.
In 2013, I mailed a new draft to Lincoln. Thus began the lengthy review process. One of the press readers liked poems, another wanted them removed. One wanted less history, another wanted more. One thought a diaspora theme required academic scholarship. I despaired and hoped and rewrote. Natasha Trethewey, former U.S. Poet Laureate and then a fellow board member of Associated Writers and Writing Programs, inspired me to keep pursuing the story of mixed identity. Her history-based poetry books were models for the task of blending lyricism and factual exposition.
Numerous friends offered writerly suggestions, as well as emotional support. My siblings reviewed the manuscript and added important information. A memoir discloses sensitive personal information. Setbacks like a negative review challenged my identity to the core. No other genre, not even poetry, opens a person so fully to the vagaries of audience reactions. I felt stripped bare.
Another year passed. One hot summer day, when I was about to throw the manuscript into the Kaw River, I called for help. UNP editor Matthew Bokovoy picked up the phone. We talked, and he suggested the need for a single narration, without the distractions of other genres. Two days later, I realized he was right.
A writer is a person who writes, and I rewrote the book again, 2014. A friend loaned me her kitchen as a makeshift writing studio. I holed up in a bed and breakfast. I wrote at home. The book finally assumed its own shape and voice, despite me.
Motivation throughout this process was my grandfather and people like him, who lived difficult lives because of Indigenous American heritage and had no voice. Stereotypes abound, and this book challenges an essentialist idea of Native experience.
In 2015, after I signed a contract, another UNP cast came forward for final revisions. Freelance editor Elizabeth Gratch became my daily friend as we emailed about fine points of syntax. A project manager, a copyeditor, designers, publicists—all played their roles. I wish I could meet them in person. They all honored me with their support during this year of work.
So many people and so many years. How long did it take to write this memoir? Seven years or sixty-seven years, depending on how you count. It must be about time to start the next one.
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Print Marked Items
Diverse books roundup
Booklist.
113.8 (Dec. 15, 2016): p12.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
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As a first course preceding our Spotlight on Diverse Books in the February 1 issue, we showcase a sampling of notable
works, nonfiction and fiction, that range across cultures.
Nonfiction
Abandon Me.
By Melissa Febos.
Feb. 2017.320p. Bloomsbury, $26 (97816328665781.818.
Febos' (Whip Smart, 2010) second book is a collection of self-aware, stylish, autobiographical essays on love,
addiction, and inheritance. Exploring her embarrassment over what she sees as her endless need for love, she touches
on her Native American, Puerto Rican, and European heritages. She draws from her youth, growing up on Cape Cod
with a veritable (and often absent) sea captain father, from her post-high-school-dropout days spent high on heroin, and
from classical philosophy, psychology, mythology, and literature. In the longest essay in the collection, which shares
the book's title and occupies more than half its pages with its 62 vignettes, she bonds with the Native American birth
father to whom she'd always been contentedly disconnected while painfullly coming to terms with her relationship with
a woman she loves obsessively. Febos harnesses language, moods, actions, and settings with precision. A professor of
creative writing, she stuns with sentences that are a credit to her craft and will no doubt inspire her readers.--Annie
Bostrom
African American Folklore: An Encyclopedia for Students.
Ed. by Anand Prahlad.
2016. illus. Greenwood, $100 (9781610699297); e-book (9781610699303). 398.2089.
The importance of chronicling, studying, and understanding African American folklore can never really be overstated.
As editor Prahlad points out in the introduction, white Americans wrote most of the history books, and the information
that was included on African Americans was often biased. This offering, with its comprehensive Range--with entries
from Cheerleading to Porch sitting to Stagolee to Juneteenth--shows off the diversity and contributions of African
American culture.
Entries are arranged in alphabetical order, but a "suggested research cluster" in the beginning of the book places like
themes together for researchers. Within each entry, words are bolded if there is another section in the book with further
information that, again, is helpful for the researcher or casual reader. Many entries are concise but not lacking
information, and each one comes with further-reading bibliographies. A longer bibliography and an index make up the
back matter. There are a few scattered black-and-white photographs, but entries that are about the visual arts would be
better understood with more examples of those arts. Prahlad sets out to have an encyclopedia that celebrates the spirit
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of African Americans without shying away from the history that shaped the culture. In this, he can be proud.--Erin
Linsenmeyer
Born Both: An Intersex Life.
By Hida Viloria.
Mar. 2017.352p. Hachette, $27 (9780316347846). 616.6.
Writer-activist Viloria was born to South American immigrant parents in 1968 in Queens with sexual anatomy that
wasn't "typically" male or female. Viloria was raised as a girl and, aside from knowing early on that s/he (the author's
chosen pronoun) had crushes on he/r female friends, didn't feel outside-the-norm. After a traumatic pregnancy at 20,
s/he learned that he/r larger-than-average clitoris placed he/r on a spectrum of people known as "intersex." S/he moved
to San Francisco, enjoying he/r ability to emphasize whichever masculine or feminine aspects felt right on any given
day and the sex and dating that went with it. After meeting other intersex people and learning of the horrific
"treatments" most had endured as infants to fall plainly on one side of the gender binary, Viloria felt compelled to fight
for he/r community. S/he outed he/r intersex status more publicly, appearing in documentaries and on TV news
programs and international conference panels in service of the rights and acceptance of intersex people. Viloria's
personal, positive, vibrant, and emotional work of advocacy will educate and affirm.--Annie Bostrom
YA: As a teen, Viloria found an androgynous safe haven in Ziggy Stardust, Grace Slick, and Prince; today's teens could
find the same in heir. AB.
Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Latin(r) Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Ed. by Matthew David Goodwin.
Jan. 2017.272p. IPG/Wings, paper, $16.95 (9781609405243). 810.8.
Editor Goodwin compares this anthology of "Latin@-penned" science fiction and fantasy to a mixtape or playlist, for
younger readers, that ebbs and flows "through the loud and the brash, the quiet and the thoughtful." Like any good
mixtape, Goodwin's slim volume starts with an attention-grabber, Kathleen Alcala's "The Road to Nyer," which sets the
tone for the reader's journey. Stories range from stunning one-pagers (Pedro Zagitt's "Circular Photography") to long,
slow-burning, languorously tense tales ("Difficult at Parties," by Carmen Maria Machado). Fans of Daniel Jose Older
will be pleased to see a story from his first collection, and readers looking for some hard sf will find what they seek in
Marcos S. Gonsalez's "Traditions." Poetry, stories told through images only, and a script show the wide range of
storytelling here. Sloughing off the worn veil of magical realism, Goodwin's anthology amplifies a new generation of
Latin@ speculative fiction voices.--Carolyn Ciesla
* My Life, My Love, My Legacy.
By Coretta Scott King and Barbara Reynolds.
Jan. 2017. 368p. illus. Holt, $30 (9781627795982). 323.092.
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King and journalist Reynolds met in 1975, forming a firm friendship during which Reynolds interviewed the wife of
Martin Luther King Jr. many times. Eventually, their conversations coalesced into a formal agreement for Reynolds to
assist the civil rights icon in writing a first-person memoir. The result is wholly focused on King's life and contains
intimate thoughts about her childhood, marriage, and professional aspirations. King is remarkably candid as she
addresses rumors of her husband's infidelity, her frustrations with the often sexist attitudes of the movement's leaders,
and the immense pressure she felt standing at the center of history. King also shares her struggle to balance the needs of
her family with her own often overlooked music career. ("I love being your wife and the mother of your children," she
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recounts telling Martin. "But if that's all I am to do, I'll go crazy.") King was undoubtedly a singular woman, and
readers will be struck by just how strongly her exceedingly compelling story resonates today. She was much more than
just the woman behind the man, and now, in the most eloquent of language, she proves that truth once and for all to
generations of readers who will embrace her all over again.--Colleen Mondor
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YA/C: The civil rights movement is a perennial research topic for teens and this accessible memoir should be
considered an immediate go-to selection. CM.
No Wall Too High: One Man's Daring Escape from Mao's Darkest Prison.
By Xu Hongci. Tr. by Erling Hoh.
Jan. 2017.336p. Farrar/Sarah Crichton, $26 (9780374212629). 951.05.
An intellectually exuberant, politically engaged student in Shanghai in the 1950s, Xu was a Communist but ran afoul of
Maoist orthodoxy and was branded a "Rightist" and sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor in the Laodong Gaizao
("reform through labor") system. The next 14 years were a blur of prisons and work camps in western China, each
bleaker than the last. He mined copper in damp caves, bore heavy loads up steep slopes, worked as a medical orderly
giving fake injections, and sat shackled in solitary. His malnourished body deteriorated. Yet Xu remained generally
adaptable and optimistic, learning what he could from his surroundings and enjoying brief camaraderie with other
prisoners even as the seriousness of his original "crime" seemed to grow over time, and sudden execution remained a
possibility. Xu's account of his escape through the desert into Mongolia is thrilling, yet this is ultimately less an
adventure story than an act of historical witness, offering a rare and unflinching first-hand description of the cruelty of
the Chinese gulag.--Brendan Driscoll
Ojibwa: People of Forests and Prairies.
By Michael G. Johnson.
2016.160p. illus. Firefly, $35 (9781770858008). 977.004.
Prehistoric Great Lakes people left evidence of their lives dating back to 5000 BCE. The Ojibwa, a term encompassing
many groups, lived throughout that vast region on bountiful land that is now located in both the U.S. and Canada,
adapting to diverse habitats, from dense evergreen and leafy forests to grasslands and prairies. They were hunters,
farmers, traders, warriors, and artists. Native American expert Johnson (Arts & Crafts of the Native American Tribes,
2011) succinctly covers Ojibwa history, then moves on to a spirited survey of the Ojibwa experience as reflected in
material culture. In this inviting volume, paintings, images of artifacts, archival photographs, and other illustrations
appear on every page in concert with a smoothly flowing, information-rich narrative. Johnson explicates the design,
creation, and significance of different types of canoes, wigwams, and clothing. The rich array of styles (beaded,
embroidered) and designs (organic, geometric) reflects the diversity of the Ojibwa world. With annotated listings of key
individuals and places, Johnson's overview establishes an illuminating historical context and captures the ongoing
vitality of Ojibwa culture and life.--Donna Seaman
Pat Patrick: American Musician and Cultural Visionary.
By Bill Banfield.
Jan. 2017.168p. Illus. Row/man & Llttlefield, $45 (9781442229730); e-book, $44.99 (9781442229747). 788.7.
Jazz saxophonist Laurdine "Pat" Patrick performed and recorded with such diverse artists as Duke Ellington,
Thelonious Monk, Quincy Jones, Nat King Cole, and Marvin Gaye. But he is most associated with the Sun Ra
Arkestra, in which he spent much of 35 years laying down the bottom with his baritone saxophone, creating a
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distinctive sound that is instantly identifiable to anyone familiar with the Sun Ra catalog. A little-known jazz fact is that
Patrick's son is Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts. Deval supplied the treasure trove of personal papers,
scrapbooks, news clippings, and photographs salvaged from his father's effects that form the bulk of material compiled
by Banfield for this treatment. There are also interviews from surviving band members, who provide a glimpse into
Patrick's good-natured personality and what it was like to survive in an avant-garde jazz big band while living on a
shoestring. A nice companion piece to A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrojuturism (2016).--David
Siegfried
Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism.
By Nancy Wang Yuen.
Dec. 2016.208p. Rutgers, paper, $22.95 (9780813586298). 791.43089.
Racial bias in the film industry is not only a trending topic but also a real and pervasive problem in the industry. A lack
of diversity on either side of the camera results in films and television programs full of stereotypes and a dearth of
opportunity for actors and other creative professionals of color. Yuen, an associate professor of sociology in California,
investigates the culture of Hollywood, where those in charge are overwhelmingly white and male, and whose decisions
and choices in casting, hiring, and programming reflect that fact. Her own interviews with nearly one hundred working
actors and the published interviews she cites with such current celebrities as Viola Davis, Chris Rock, Gina Rodriguez,
and Lucy Liu provide a personal look at what it is like to succeed in this environment. In addition to a persuasive
narrative, there are suggestions for readers who wish to take action and a list of media advocacy organizations. Anyone
interested in who is "in the room where it happens" and who is left out will applaud this thoughtful treatise.--Carolyn
Mulac
* Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin.
By Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin.
Jan. 2017.352p. Random, $26 (9780812997231). 363.2.
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Fulton and Martin's beloved 17-year-old son, Trayvon, for whom they had the highest aspirations, was going through a
rough patch in early 2012. Though the couple was divorced, Fulton, who worked for the Miami-Dade housing
authority, and Martin, a truck driver, remained equally close to their son. Both felt that it would do Trayvon good to get
out of Miami for a little vacation with Martin's girlfriend and her son in their safe, gated community in Sanford,
Florida. Instead, Trayvon, walking in the rain, wearing a hoodie, and talking on his cell phone, was shot dead by a
neighborhood-watch volunteer. As the fifth anniversary of this tragic crime nears, Fulton and Martin share a
remarkably candid and deeply affecting in-the-moment chronicle of the explosive aftermath of the murder. Writing in
alternate chapters, they share every detail of their shock, grief, and grueling quest for justice as their private loss
became a public cause inspiring prominent figures to speak out and tens of thousands to express their support on the
streets and online. Given the unconscionable shooting deaths of young black men, many by police, that followed
Trayvon's, this galvanizing testimony from parents who channeled their sorrow into action offers a deeply humanizing
perspective on the crisis propelling a national movement.--Donna Seaman
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YA: Teens will be profoundly moved and deeply informed by seeing the Trayvon Martin case through the eyes of the
17-year-old's grieving parents as they courageously fight for justice. DS.
* True South: Henry Hampton and Eyes on the Prize, the Landmark Television Series That Reframed the Civil Rights
Movement.
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By Jon Else.
Jan. 2017.432p. Viking, $30 (9781101980934). 323.4.
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Distinguished documentarian and MacArthur fellow Else has written a hard-driving, avidly detailed, and dramatic
history of the making of Eyes on the Prize, the pioneering 1987 television documentary series about the civil rights
movement. His uniquely knowing account is powered by his adventures as series producer and enriched by his vivid
and admiring portrait of Henry Hampton (1940-98), the visionary genius and polio survivor who created the series.
Their close working relationship was rooted in their experiences working in the early voter-registration efforts in the
South. Else crisply illuminates Hampton's mission to focus on the ordinary African Americans who refused to be
victims of racism and were, instead, courageous and strategic agents for change. Hampton's radical and progressive
innovations extended to his production company, and Else tracks the racist, sexist, political, and financial obstacles
confronting Hampton's multicultural, gender-equal, chronically underfunded, talented, and committed staff. In his
seemingly frame-by-frame account, Else covers the evolution of American historical television documentaries while
telling riveting tales of the epic research, endless production difficulties, and sensitive aesthetic choices that resulted in
the triumphant success and lasting influence of Eyes on the Prize. With its many hooks and avenues, compelling
portraits, and thought-provoking revelations, this in-depth chronicle of the making of a defining civil rights
documentary is an invaluable and timely work.--Donna Seaman
The Turtle's Beating Heart: One Family's Story of Lenape Survival.
By Denise Low.
Jan. 2017.200p. Univ. of Nebraska, $24.95 (9780803294936). 978.1.
Low delves into the Delaware Indian heritage of her maternal grandfather, who lived in Kansas from 1889 to 1963.
Because of discrimination against native people that followed the Delaware branch of the Lenape from New Jersey to
Kansas and later to a reservation in Oklahoma--what Low calls "the longest Trail of Tears," extending from 1600 to
1867--her family suppressed their ethnic background, only acknowledging their German and Irish ties. The "vigilante
threat" was very real in her grandfather's day, with African Americans, Catholics, Mexican Americans, and Native
Americans all becoming targets of the Kansas KKK. Another threat to indigenous families was forced enrollment in
Indian boarding schools, which Low's grandfather avoided by moving just outside of federal jurisdiction. The family
lived, like many others of mixed heritage, in limbo for years until the author realized that "each individual has a
responsibility to a larger history" that should be passed on to not just one's own children but all those that follow.
Consequently, she was inspired to research and write this remarkable story of her long-buried native ancestry.--Deborah
Donovan
Fiction
Dance of the Jakaranda.
By Peter Kimani.
Feb. 2017.320p. Akashic, paper, $15.95 (9781617754968).
Kenyan journalist and author Kimani's novel explores the lives of three men living during the British colonization of
Kenya. Following narrators at the turn of the twentieth century and in the 1960s before Kenyan independence, Kimani's
descriptive and inventive prose recounts personal stories of love and tragedy within a context of racial hierarchies and
the fallout of colonial rule. Nightclub singer Rajan is besotted with a mysterious woman who kisses him during a
blackout. Her appearance provokes flashbacks to his grandfather Babu's time building the railroad across Kenya with a
team of Indian and African men. Babu and his wife, Fatima, both from Punjab, struggle with a new country, a curse,
and infidelity. Babu's story feels weighted by history in a way that will remind readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
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work. White Brits Ian McDonald and Reverend Richard Turnbull provide counter-perspectives as the colonizers and
enforcers of strict racial divisions. Kimani's complex novel will leave readers questioning the meanings of citizenship
and belonging during an era of significant social upheaval in Kenya's history.--Laura Chanoux
* Exit West.
By Mohsin Hamid.
Mar. 2017. 240p. Riverhead, $26 (9780735212176).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In an unnamed city with strict social mores, young Nadia is a rebel, an atheist who chooses to live and work
independently. In religious and unassuming Saeed she finds the perfect companion. As the two fall in love, their
romance is tinged with a sense of urgency and in-evitability as the city falls to militia, and basic freedoms and food
quickly become rarities. When the situation turns dire, Saeed and Nadia decide to migrate as thousands already have
and cobble together every last bit of their savings to find safe passage out. Caught in the whirlpool of refugees from
around the world, Saeed and Nadia are tossed around like flotsam, the necessity of survival binding them together more
than any starry-eyed notion of romance ever could. If at times the story of refugees facing no easy choice feels
derivative, Hamid (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, 2013) smooths over such wrinkles with spellbinding writing
and a story of a relationship that sucks its own marrow dry for sustenance. The concept of the door is a powerful,
double-edged metaphor here, representing a portal leading to a promised land that when closed, however, condemns
one to fates from which there is no escape.--Poornima Apte
* Pachinko.
By Min Jin Lee.
Feb. 2017.496p. Grand Central, $25.98 (9781478907121).
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A decade after her international best-selling debut, Free Food for Millionaires (2007), Lee's follow-up is an exquisite,
haunting epic that crosses almost a century, four generations, and three countries while depicting an ethnic Korean
family that cannot even claim a single shared name because, as the opening line attests: "History has failed us." In
1910, Japan annexes Korea, usurping the country and controlling identity. Amid the tragedies that follow, a fisherman
and his wife survive through sheer tenacity. Their beloved daughter, married to a gentle minister while pregnant with
another man's child, initiates the migration to Japan to join her husband's older brother and wife. Their extended family
will always live as second-class immigrants; no level of achievement, integrity, or grit can change their status as reviled
foreigners. Two Japanese-born sons choose diverging paths; one grandson hazards a further immigration to the other
side of the world. Although the characters are oppressed by the age-old belief sho ga nai (it can't be helped), "moments
of shimmering beauty and some glory, too," illuminate the narrative. Incisively titled (pachinko resemble slot machines
with pinball characteristics), Lee's profound novel of losses and gains explored through the social and cultural
implications of pachinko-parlor owners and users is shaped by impeccable research, meticulous plotting, and empathic
perception.--Terry Hong
* The Refugees.
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By Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Feb. 2017.192p. Grove, $24 (9780801289356).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Nguyen received a barrage of awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Pulitzer
Prize, for his debut, the commanding novel The Sympathizer (2015). A nonfiction work, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam
and the Memory of War (2016), cast light on the personal experiences and profound historical and cultural inquiry
underlying his novel. Nguyen now presents a collection of fluidly modulated yet bracing stories about Vietnamese
refugees in the U.S., powerful tales of rupture and loss that detonate successive shock waves. "Black-Eyed Women" is a
ghost story about a ghostwriter who lost her brother during the family's terrifying boat escape. In the exquisitely subtle
"The Other Man," a Vietnamese refugee welcomed into the San Francisco home of a gay couple struggles with the
baffling process of acclimation. A boy witnesses a stunning reversal in the pitched battle between his mother, a
Vietnamese woman running a small grocery store, and another woman refugee demanding protection money. Each
intimate, supple, and heartrending story is unique in its particulars even as all are works of piercing clarity, poignant
emotional nuance, and searing insights into the trauma of war and the long chill of exile, the assault on identity and the
resilience of the self, and the fragility and preciousness of memories.--Donna Seaman
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Diverse books roundup." Booklist, 15 Dec. 2016, p. 12+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476563417&it=r&asid=b08a7734b81cd030a35ab7f732fb4b57.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476563417
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Low, Denise: THE TURTLE'S BEATING
HEART
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Low, Denise THE TURTLE'S BEATING HEART Bison/Univ. of Nebraska (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 1, 1 ISBN: 978-
0-8032-9493-6
A poet and professor comes to terms with her Native American heritage.Though many tribes have been better able to
sustain a collective identity--whether on a reservation or through perpetuation of their legacy--Low (Jackalope, 2015,
etc.) never knew much about her Delaware (Lenape) heritage when she was growing up in Kansas. When the Delaware
"sold" Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626, many of them dispersed in various directions, sometimes in different clans
("Wolf, Turkey, and Turtle"), but they retained no sustained tribal identity. Low's mother rarely acknowledged that
bloodline and showed disfavor toward the daughter who so resembled her grandfather. "Discrimination against Native
people has been so fierce that many people, like my family, suppressed their identity with non-Europeans as completely
as possible," she writes. "Some black Cherokees chose to identify with African Americans because it was easier." As
the former poet laureate of Kansas and a dean at the Haskell Indian Nations University, she found herself traveling
around the state, hearing stories from those with similar backgrounds. She became even more curious about the legacy
that seemed lost, the history her family never spoke about, the one it had tried to hide, to marry above, to leave dead in
the past. "This process has healed me," she writes, allowing her to deepen the sort of relationship with her mother that
they'd never had when the latter was living, to discover just how much in common she had with her grandfather, and to
realize how those earlier had suffered at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and discrimination in general. "The story of my
grandfather and my mother has become my own, as my past grows longer than my future," she writes. An engagingly
written mix of research, reportage, and memoir, infused with the passion of discovery.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Low, Denise: THE TURTLE'S BEATING HEART." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329259&it=r&asid=82bc241bd9665d102203d57f6564f962.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466329259
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Low, Denise. The Turtle's Beating Heart: One
Family's Story of Lenape Survival
John R. Burch
Library Journal.
141.17 (Oct. 15, 2016): p94.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Low, Denise. The Turtle's Beating Heart: One Family's Story of Lenape Survival. Bison: Univ. of Nebraska. Jan.
2017.200p. illus. notes, bibliog. ISBN 9780803294936. $24.95. AUTOBIOG
Spurred by the recognition that she knew little about her grandfather Frank Brunner, despite living in close proximity to
him through much of her childhood, Low (former Kansas poet laureate; Worlds of a Prairie Alchemist) endeavored to
discover why he was intentionally aloof toward even close relatives. What emerged from her research is this poignant
memoir that illuminates not only the experiences that shaped Brunner but also the trauma wrought by the continuation
of the Delaware (Lenape) diaspora, which began in the 18th century. Although Brunner tried to hide his native heritage
as a young man, he and his family were subjected to constant harassment and discrimination while living in Burns, KS,
including threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan. In response, Brunner relocated with his family to Kansas City. As
an adult, he opted to protect his loved ones through isolation and no mention of his Delaware ancestry. While well
intentioned, this tactic had long-term implications for his descendants. Through her dogged research, Low rediscovers
her native heritage and makes connections to others who share her background. VERDICT Readers interested in the
20th-century American Indian experience will find this to be a valuable account.-- John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ.
Lib., KY
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Burch, John R. "Low, Denise. The Turtle's Beating Heart: One Family's Story of Lenape Survival." Library Journal, 15
Oct. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466413008&it=r&asid=ba094f9f46317e40926c044366f26584.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466413008
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Denise Low: THE TURTLE'S BEATING
HEART
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Denise Low THE TURTLE'S BEATING HEART Bison/Univ. of Nebraska (Adult Nonfiction) 24.95 ISBN: 978-0-
8032-9493-6
A poet and professor comes to terms with her Native American heritage.Though many tribes have been better able to
sustain a collective identity—whether on a reservation or through perpetuation of their legacy—Low
(Jackalope, 2015, etc.) never knew much about her Delaware (Lenape) heritage when she was growing up in Kansas.
When the Delaware “sold” Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626, many of them dispersed in various
directions, sometimes in different clans (“Wolf, Turkey, and Turtle”), but they retained no sustained
tribal identity. Low’s mother rarely acknowledged that bloodline and showed disfavor toward the daughter
who so resembled her grandfather. “Discrimination against Native people has been so fierce that many people,
like my family, suppressed their identity with non-Europeans as completely as possible,” she writes.
“Some black Cherokees chose to identify with African Americans because it was easier.” As the
former poet laureate of Kansas and a dean at the Haskell Indian Nations University, she found herself traveling around
the state, hearing stories from those with similar backgrounds. She became even more curious about the legacy that
seemed lost, the history her family never spoke about, the one it had tried to hide, to marry above, to leave dead in the
past. “This process has healed me,” she writes, allowing her to deepen the sort of relationship with
her mother that they’d never had when the latter was living, to discover just how much in common she had
with her grandfather, and to realize how those earlier had suffered at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and discrimination
in general. “The story of my grandfather and my mother has become my own, as my past grows longer than
my future,” she writes. An engagingly written mix of research, reportage, and memoir, infused with the
passion of discovery.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Denise Low: THE TURTLE'S BEATING HEART." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551509&it=r&asid=7c357b06eee3c05d74c089c1aacf6c01.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466551509
OOKS 409830175
Review: 'The Turtle's Beating Heart,' by Denise Low
NONFICTION: An American Indian grandfather's melancholy silence hid personal and broader stories.
By Pamela Miller Star Tribune JANUARY 6, 2017 — 10:08AM
itemprop
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A partial translation of the Schaghen Letter, the earliest document of the so-called purchase of Manhattan from the Lenape, reads, "They have purchased the Island of Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders; it is 11,000 morgens in size about 22,000 acres."
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“The Turtle’s Beating Heart,” the title of this arresting family memoir by former Kansas poet laureate Denise Low, was inspired by a story she heard from an Arikara Indian woman whose grandmother once fed her the heart of a just slaughtered turtle, whose “hearts keep beating long after separation from their bodies.” This, Low writes, “was an old ceremony for a woman’s coming of age. The woman never forgot the lesson of Turtle’s strength, as she felt the sensation of the moving heart in her mouth, throat, stomach, and gut.”
Well into adulthood, Low came into the realization that her maternal grandfather, Frank Bruner Jr., was a Delaware (Lenape) Indian, part of a diaspora of that tribe, whose members were present at the so-called sale of Manhattan Island to the Dutch and were later driven, in fits and starts, over centuries, westward to various decreasingly verdant landscapes. As a child, she often heard vague, uneasy references to Indian ancestry, and it is that secrecy, even more than the ancestry itself, that inspired the quest that led to this book. “Historic trauma is the term that suggests long-lasting effects of grief through generations, and it frames my account,” she writes. “Restoring my family’s suppressed ethnic background adds a small part to the marginalized Delaware history.”
Low’s exploration of her parents’, grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives leads her to a better understanding of her own childhood and self. But more important than her personal odyssey is the broader understanding that she shares about how American Indian ancestry, especially when it lacks the blood quantum proof that allows a person official tribal membership, can be a mixed blessing. The kind of pride a modern American might feel in it is often the exact opposite of the emotions it evoked in their parents and grandparents.
That is true for Low’s mother, who referred to her own father’s Indian heritage only sparsely and with embarrassment, bitterly blaming it for his late-in-life alcoholism and melancholy. And yet, Low realized after her mother’s death how many things in her mother’s life were inspired, often unconsciously, by her father’s Delaware ancestry and culture.
Low remembers Bruner, who died when she was a child, as a silent, kind man who taught her to play cards and seemed shaped and bent by a host of mysteries. As a child, she could not have guessed at those; as an adult, learning of his Indian ancestry, it all made melancholy sense. Bruner, like many Indians who sought to assimilate early in the 20th century to escape anti-Indian contempt and violence, suffered deeply for his life of denial.
While Low’s exploration makes for a powerful family memoir, it wavers as history. Her memories of her grandfather, as well as those of other ancestors, are slim and blurry, and during his life he said little and wrote even less.
Denise Low Photo by Tracy Rasmussen/Insight Photography
PHOTO BY TRACY RASMUSSEN/INSIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Denise Low Photo by Tracy Rasmussen/Insight Photography
“Silence is a common symptom of the trauma of Native displacement,” she writes. However true that may be, it makes her analysis of his emotions and motivations almost pure speculation, and perhaps more linked to her own modern psychology than to his own.
That’s a problem that any of us might run into, climbing up into our family tree on Ancestry.com or in old family papers and elders’ stories. We learn a lot that also tells us some things about ourselves, but there is also a cavernous silence there, and mysteries that must always remain so.
Still, Low does Americans with Indian ancestry a valuable service by illuminating the unique and often terrible circumstances and choices their forebears faced. It is that haunting sense of disturbance, like the still-beating heart of the turtle in the gut, that is worth acknowledging and honoring.
Pamela Miller is a Star Tribune night metro editor.
The Turtle's Beating Heart
By: Denise Low.
Publisher: Bison Books, 200 pages, $24.95.
The Turtle's Beating Heart
One Family's Story of Lenape Survival
Reviewed by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
March 2, 2017
The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival opens with a tribal elder’s explanation: “Delawares are like clouds….They never get together.” Thus, Denise Low tackles one of the longest diasporas of any US tribal nation, in her searching memoir about family, identity, and history. Written in three parts, Low speaks profoundly about difficult truths, teasing apart family stories and reweaving them into a larger narrative of historical trauma, where “the past is a presence, beyond language, memory, and culture.”
An accomplished poet, Low’s well-honed prose flows with lyric intensity. In Kansas, a place “where eternity has a real valence,” she searches for documentary evidence of her ancestors’ passage through history and for the timeless threads of culture—familial and tribal—that could offer an unbroken legacy. As she uncovers family history, the personal becomes devastatingly political as the outcomes of government and social policies emerge in the vastly different, often fractured identities her relatives have claimed in an ever-shifting, often hostile, world. She swiftly discovers tribal heritage is latent in her family’s culture, from consistent settlement patterns in riverine geography to glyphic writing discovered on family tombstones. Yet her family also exists in the penumbra of history, unregistered by the US government, off tribal rolls and reservations, and the ramifications are far-reaching and complex. Ultimately, Low resolves, “We are made up of many fractions of bloodlines, but family inheritance is not a single pattern so easily measured by mathematic abstractions….The heart beats extra blood to the dominant side. No fourth is equal [but] a human’s single heart is critical to existence, no matter which quarter holds it.”
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the author for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
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The Turtle’s Beating Heart by Denise Low
MISCELLANEOUS
Author: Denise Low
The cover to The Turtle’s Beating Heart by Denise LowLincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2017. 177 pages.
Peek into the kaleidoscope spin of one family’s sense of identity. Denise Low’s The Turtle’s Beating Heart invites you to watch as she looks into the complexities and moving patterns of diaspora, social pressure, and cultural shift. The author is fearless. This kind of exploration can create family strains. With indigenous identities under microscopic examination, exploration is risky. Low brings her eye to bear on the less understood experience of her Lenape family. She takes a long and loving look.
“Discrimination against Native people has been so fierce that many people, like my family, suppressed their non-European ancestry as completely as possible,” says Low. Native people have been struggling for the right to narrate our own varied stories since contact. From one nation to another, from history-book erasures to overdramatizations, from Native story to movie-land fantasy, these lives are described honestly or faked or misunderstood or jazzed up. These stories have tended to move into private family realms, handed on over kitchen tables, or even not spoken aloud at all. Low shows us what she has been told and what she can find with little or no varnish and a clear acknowledgment of the potential unreliability of family oral history.
In an environment where identities are questioned from both within the general, pan-Indigenous community and from without based on looks or names or people’s own self-claimed ownership of what an indigenous identity should be, this kind of writing is essential. Low alludes to the responsibility of being different, of living an often misunderstood truth. “Once, when I was a young woman, a Native elder told me that younger people are always watching me, to see how to behave.” The lessons she brings forward are profound. They preserve the memory of her ancestors, both recent and remote, and feed the generations now growing and to come. This book is a deep and important gift from a master wordcrafter. It’s not easy to speak from a trained silence, but as her grandparents and parents did, Denise Low is doing what is needed to keep the turtle’s heart beating.
Kim Shuck
San Francisco
The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival
Book Cover
Denise Low
Bison Books
Hardcover $24.95 (200pp)
978-0-8032-9493-6
The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival opens with a tribal elder’s explanation: “Delawares are like clouds….They never get together.” Thus, Denise Low tackles one of the longest diasporas of any US tribal nation, in her searching memoir about family, identity, and history. Written in three parts, Low speaks profoundly about difficult truths, teasing apart family stories and reweaving them into a larger narrative of historical trauma, where “the past is a presence, beyond language, memory, and culture.”
An accomplished poet, Low’s well-honed prose flows with lyric intensity. In Kansas, a place “where eternity has a real valence,” she searches for documentary evidence of her ancestors’ passage through history and for the timeless threads of culture—familial and tribal—that could offer an unbroken legacy. As she uncovers family history, the personal becomes devastatingly political as the outcomes of government and social policies emerge in the vastly different, often fractured identities her relatives have claimed in an ever-shifting, often hostile, world. She swiftly discovers tribal heritage is latent in her family’s culture, from consistent settlement patterns in riverine geography to glyphic writing discovered on family tombstones. Yet her family also exists in the penumbra of history, unregistered by the US government, off tribal rolls and reservations, and the ramifications are far-reaching and complex. Ultimately, Low resolves, “We are made up of many fractions of bloodlines, but family inheritance is not a single pattern so easily measured by mathematic abstractions….The heart beats extra blood to the dominant side. No fourth is equal [but] a human’s single heart is critical to existence, no matter which quarter holds it.”