Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives

by Ray A. Young Bear, Albert E. Stone (Designed by)

Overview

Destined to become a classic of Native American literature, Black Eagle Child uses a rich mix of verse, prose narrative, and letters to tell Edgar Bearchild's journey to adulthood, from his childhood delight in Jell-O to his induction into the faith of his elders. Seamlessly mixing tribal memory and the comic events of Bearchild's life, Young Bear's story excels at startling, absurdist juxtapositions of the ancient and modern, expresses bemusement and anger at the strange ways of whites, and tells of the strength and vision that come from his Native tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780877453567
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	03/01/1992
Series:	Singular Lives Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	281
Product dimensions:	5.82(w) x 9.31(h) x 0.92(d)

What People are Saying About This

Louise Erdich

"Ray A. Young Bear's gives us the gift of an anguished imagination marked with grace and humor. His writing ultimately washes and heals, but always instructs from a deep vision of the world."

Editorial Reviews

This wonderful volume of stories, told in both prose and poetry, floats between memoir and fiction, history and storytelling. To tell his story, Young Bear creates a fictional counterpart to Iowa's Mesquakie Settlement, where he is an enrolled, lifelong resident, and the fictional persona of Edgar Bearchild. Bearchild's account of childhood to young manhood, from the Fifties through the Seventies, mixes the common history of drugs, Vietnam, and The Doors with the racism and injustice of Native American experience. Interwoven through this personal story are tales told by other speakers, sometimes elegiac, often comic. Effectively the book is as much an autobiography of a community as it is the history of a singular life. This is recommended for most collections.-- Brian Kenney, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.

Library Journal