I hope everyone had a good October. Mine wasn’t as productive as I would have liked, but I’m looking to make that up in November. In November I like to focus on books by Indigenous authors and indigenous topics. Here are some of the books I want to tackle this November.
1.) The Truth According to Ember
This book is a contemporary romance about a Chickasaw woman named Ember Lee Cardinal. She can’t catch a break and is often caught up in her white lies. But she doesn’t think they are anything serious.
Ember’s lying gets more ‘creative’ though when she can’t catch a break in her job search. After her application gets rejected for a thirty-seventh time. She gives a little bit of half-lie about her ethnicity. She claims to be white, and suddenly her application to her dream accounting job is now open to her.
Thriving on corporate life, Ember’s life seems to be looking up. And so does her love life. A fellow Native who works at the company caught her eye on her first day. And despite the company’s no dating policy they begin to see each other in secret. Which somehow is even hotter.
But when she and her boyfriend are caught in a compromising position on a work trip. A scheming colleague blackmails Ember threatening to expose their relationship. As the manipulation grows Ember must choose whether she wants to stay silent. Or tell the truth which costs her everything.
Amazon: The Truth According to Ember
About the Author
Danica Nava is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and works as an Executive Assistant in the tech industry. She has her MBA from USC Marshall School of Business. She currently lives in Southern California with her husband and daughter. The Truth According to Ember is her debut novel. You can find her on Instagram at the handle @danica_nava.
2) Never Whistle At Night
This book is a dark fiction anthology of Indigenous stories. These stories deal with the common myth that one should never whistle at night. This myth is seen in many places throughout native cultures. For example the native Hawaiians have a belief that believe that it summons the Hukai’po, or the spirits of ancient warriors while Native Mexicans say it calls the Lechuza, a witch who transforms into an owl. These legends all hold the idea in common that whistling at night calls evil spirits to you or to follow you home.
The anthology is filled with original and spooky tales. These stories introduce readers to ghosts, curses and haunting. They also feature complex family legacies and chilling acts of revenge. Bestselling writer Stephen Graham Jones introduces and contextualizes the celebration of Indigenous people’s survival and imagination.
Amazon: Never Whistle at Night
About the Editors
SHANE HAWK (enrolled Cheyenne-Arapaho, Hidatsa and Potawatomi descent) is a history teacher by day and a horror writer by night. He entered the horror scene with his first publication, Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror, in October 2020. He lives in San Diego with his beautiful wife, Tori. Learn more by visiting shanehawk.com.
THEODORE C. VAN ALST, JR. (enrolled member, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the author of the novel Sacred Smokes, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, and Sacred City, winner of the Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories. His Pushcart-nominated fiction has been published in Southwest Review, Unnerving Magazine, Red Earth Review, The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Massachusetts Review, The Raven Chronicles, and Yellow Medicine Review, among others. He is a professor and chair of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University.
3) Poukahangatus
This book of poetry explores what it is to be a young Indigenous woman in the twenty-first-century. Through each poem Tibble explores topics like modernity and ancestry, desire and exploitation. Tibble presents a bold new way of engaging with history.
The book is Tibble’s debut volume and is both moving and intimate. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), Tibble addresses an array of mythologies. Those mythologies include, Greek, Māori, feminist and kiwi. Tibble peels them apart and respins the stories for modern life, referencing things such as the Kardashians,sugar daddies and Twilight. Tibble is a master narrator of teenage womanhood. From its dizzying highs to its devestating lows, her camp aesthetics work well with her topics.
Tibble adresses everything from the effects of colonization, land, work and gender and how all those factors are obviously connected. She is a bright shining new poet and it will be interesting to see more of her work.
Amazon: Poūkahangatus
About the Author
Tayi Tibble (Te Whanau a Apanui, Ngati Porou) is an Indigenous writer from Aotearoa. She is the author of two poetry collections, Rangikura (2024) and Poūkahangatus (2022), both published by Knopf.
4) To Shape a Dragon’s Breath
Voted Best Book of the Year in 2023 by The Washington Post, NPR, PopSugar, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, She Reads, Autostraddle
Set on the remote island of Masquapaug, the people of the island haven’t seen a dragon in generations. That is until fifteen year old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, as the island has an oral history of tales. These tales tell of the dragons living close of the people, dancing away storms and helping the island thrive.
Anequs is revered as a Nampeshiweisit—a person in a unique relationship with a dragon.
Unfortunatly for Anequs the Anglish conqurors of her lands have different opinions. Those opinions focus on a very specific idea of how dragons should be raised. They also have strict requirements of who should be raising dragons. And Anequs doesn’t meet any of them. With great reluctance the Anglish allow Anequs to enroll in a ‘proper’ Anglish dragon school.
The stakes are high for Anequs though, if she cannot succeed her dragon will be killed. But challenges abound at the school. From her lack of formal schooling to a very different understanding of the history of her land she has problems both socially and academically.
But Anequs is smart, determined, and resolved to help her dragon. She’ll learn what she has to do even if it means teaching herself. But the only thing she wont do is become the meek Anglish miss everyone wants her to be.
As Anequs and her dragon come of age they also come into power. With this power brings an important realization. The world needs changing and they might be the ones who need to change it.
Amazon: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath
About the Author
Moniquill Blackgoose is the bestselling author of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which has won both the Nebula and Lodestar Awards. She began writing science fiction and fantasy when she was twelve and hasn’t stopped writing since.
She is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe and a lineal descendant of Ousamequin Massasoit. She is an avid costumer and an active member of the steampunk community. She has blogged, essayed, and discussed extensively across many platforms the depictions of Indigenous and Indigenous-coded characters in sci-fi and fantasy.
5) Eagle Drums
A Newberry Honor Book, Eagle Drums is a middle grade book that goes over the Native Arctic origin story of the Iñupiaq Messenger Feast. The book includes beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and full color throughout. With beautifully hand-drawn full color art throughout!
The book tells the story of a young skilled hunter who must go to the mountain where his two brothers died to collect obsidian for knapping (or shaping stone tools). When he reaches the mountain top he is confronted by a terrifying eagle god.
The eagle god named Savik, gives the young man a choice, to follow him or to die like his brothers. Choosing to follow the eagle god the young man goes on a harrowing journey to the home of the eagle gods.
He receives unexpected lessons on the natural world, the past, and his community. This book celebrated cultural folklore, part myth, part origin story about how the Iñupiaq were givin the gift of music, song and dance.
Amazon: Eagle Drums
About the Author
Born and raised in the rural expanse of the North Slope of Alaska, Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson grew up on fantastic tales from her unique and rich Indigenous Iñupiaq culture. When she is not writing or creating art inspired by these stories, she is studying how to grow food in the arctic and is working at preserving traditional Iñupiaq knowledge.
She has a degree in Studio Art and has taught all levels of Art from kindergarten to college level. She lives in Anaktuvuk Pass Alaska with her husband and daughter, three dogs, and a small flock of arctic chickens where she lives off the land and the amazing bounty it provides like her ancestors did for thousands of years. She is the author of Eagle Drums.
In addition to tackling these books, I’d like to try and finish a few books on native issues and history. I will be putting up these non-fiction picks somewhere in addition to my responses to these books throughout the month.
What are you hoping to read for November? Let me know in the comments below!
Rose's Book Garden 