The radical act of sharing Native literature

High Country News talked to Book Club founder Kinsale Drake (Diné), a poet whose book The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket won the National Poetry Series, about the need for literary community, elevating Native writers, and what happens when you drive into a small town with a big pink truck full of free books.

High Country News: Where did the idea for NDN Girls Book Club come from?

Kinsale Drake: My college thesis was about retention rates of Native students in higher ed. We have the lowest retention rates, and there are systemic gaps that gave rise to those disparities — everything from lack of access to literature and mentors on reservation, to financial obstacles, to lack of Native representation in everything from curriculum to professors. I looked at what programs could be implemented to bridge the gaps and where Native students could become more prepared. There was a lack of community and a lack of canon. That was the start of the idea that became Book Club. I wanted to marry that with workshops and interacting with authors to build the connection and resources that I wish I’d had when I was a kid. The Indian girl we talk about in NDN Girl Book Club, it’s me: I’m the little Indian girl.

HCN: It’s called Book Club, but it seems like it’s about much more than getting together to talk about books.

KD: Overall, there’s an umbrella dedication to uplifting Native storytelling, because it feels like that addresses a lot of needs that are interconnected in our communities. We do youth mentorship, writing workshops and author talks. We offer free workshops every month where people can come in and connect with each other over literature or writing. There’s not a lot of programs that offer that specifically for Native community. We talk about the authors we love and the canon of works we desire, along with things like tokenization, what it felt like to be the only Native person in a room. That sense of community vital to our art: It nourishes us and allows us to keep creating. We work with publishers and presses to get books by Native authors donated to tribal libraries, schools and reading groups, because part of our work is showing publishers that there’s a need and desire for Native writers. We send out “book care packages” for free to any Native people who sign up. Just straight up sending out Native books to Native people feels like radical work.

HCN: Last summer you gave away 10,000 books at five book drops across the Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation. That seems radical.

KD: We wanted to get Native literature out to Navajo and Hopi communities with no strings attached, and we estimated that 10,000 books was one Native book per household. In a lot of ways, the idea came out of working in mutual aid during the pandemic. Our communities were some of the most heavily impacted, and the ways they mobilized during COVID laid the foundations to get other things out to the communities.

We’d show up in a big pink truck, which was decorated with work by Native artists, and we’d set up like a bookstore where people could come in and take whatever books they wanted. We brought in local artists and artisans, we fed people. There were diapers and shoes alongside the books. We had 1,500 people showing up at some of the stops, and at every stop every book was gone by the end of the day.

A lot of the reaction was shock; people would come in, get really excited. They were like, “Really? We can take as many as we want?”

We’d see people sitting down and starting to read. There’d be recognition with the stories and immediate reactions to what was in the books. We hoped people would have intergenerational conversations, and it felt like we were seeing the beginnings of a number of beautiful conversations.

HCN: What have been some of your favorite books to share?

KD: I love Mavasta Honyouti’s Coming Home. He’s a Hopi master woodcarver — it’s something that’s been passed through his family — and the book is about his grandfather’s experience in residential school, then coming home to learn working with wood, working on the land. It’s a story that a lot of us can really relate to our family history, and the illustrations are all wood carvings. We just gave out a couple hundred copies of Rez Ball by Byron Graves (Ojibwe), and there’s a lot about healthy masculinity in that, which I think can be healing, especially for Native boys.

HCN: Why do books feel so necessary?

KD: For one, I think storytelling in our communities has been important since the beginning of time.

Speaking as a Navajo, stories are what brought us into the world; they tell us where we come from; they have enabled our survival. Books are stories, but at the same time, the English language has been weaponized against us. A lot of elders have contentious relationships with books. Boarding schools forced them to speak and read English and made us ashamed of our languages. So much of the narrative has been written about us instead of by us. Sharing literature by and for Native people feels like an act to combat those wounds. Creating accurate representation has a beneficial impact on our communities’ mental health, and building new, sustainable relationships with literature feels like a first step in a lot of healing that needs to be done.

This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.