This week, we’re taking our traveling book club to the West Liberty Public Library, where the librarians have picked out books written by, or about Native people.
WEST LIBERTY, Iowa — Grab your library card and get ready for some reads, perfect for any long, holiday weekends.
Every other Wednesday, we check in on a new town for our traveling book club, “Current Reads,” during our 4 p.m. show, The Current. For this edition, we’re headed to the West Liberty Public Library in Muscatine County, Iowa. And instead of our usual three book recommendations, the librarians have given us a fourth, bonus book this time!
November is Native American Heritage Month. It’s a time to celebrate the cultures, customs, languages and more of Native Americans and Native Alaskans. All month, the West Liberty library has been featuring books by Native authors, or those that feature Native characters. And these are the four they say their readers can’t put down:
- “The Truth According to Ember” by Danica Nava is all about a Chickasaw woman whose little white lie snowballs into so much more. Ember Lee Cardinal hasn’t always been a liar! Well, not for anything that mattered. But when her job search turns into her 37th rejection, she gets ‘creative’ with her qualifications and ethnicity question on the applications. Native American Ember wasn’t wanted, but white Ember has just landed her dream accounting job on Park Avenue… Oklahoma City. Once here, the cute, fellow Native IT guy, Danuwoa Colson catches her eye and actually seems to be interested in her too! They start to see each other, despite a strict no-dating policy at work. But when they’re caught and a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, the manipulation – and the lies – grow. Suddenly, she must make the hard decision to stay silent, or finally tell the truth, even if it costs her everything.
- “Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band” by Christian Staebler, Sonia Paoloni and Thibault Balahy is the powerful story of the Native American civil rights movement and the struggle for identity, told through the high-flying career of West Coast rock ‘n’ roll pioneers: Redbone. You might have heard “Come and Get Your Love” in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but there’s a deeper story behind the band responsible for the hit. It involves culture, politics and social importance. Pat and Lolly Vegas were talented Native American brothers and rock musicians in the 1960s. They’ve been credited with influencing The Doors and Jimmy Hendrix. Eventually, they signed with Epic Records in 1969, determined to control their creative vision and maintain their cultural identity. But as the American Indian Movement gained momentum, the brothers – and the band – took a stand for pride in their ancestry, over continued commercial reward. Part biography, part journalism and part comics, this is the true and vivid story of one of America’s neglected historical chapters.
- “The Other Side of Perfect” by Melanie Florence and Richard Scrimger is a back and forth tale from two authors, with each writing alternating chapters and point of views. It follows two kids from different worlds who form an unexpected friendship. Cody’s home life is messy and filled with neglect and abuse. But Cody is smart, on top of being a survivor who uses his sense of humor to see past his circumstances. Meanwhile, Autumn is a wealthy girl from an indigenous family, who’s part of the popular crowd, even though it’s difficult for her to want to keep it up. Everything changes for the two when Autumn returns home one evening to find Cody face down behind her house. He’s just escaped an encounter with his father that he knows he can’t live through again. When Autumn agrees to let him hide out in her house, both of their stories start to come out.
- “Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story” by Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal is the winner of the 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal and the 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner. It’s a depiction of a modern Native American family and fry bread, which is a traditional flat dough bread, fried in oil, shortening or lard. It has a complicated history that is intertwined with colonialism and displacement of millions of Native Americans. The ingredients were provided to Native people when they were moved from areas where they spent generations growing and foraging traditional foods, to areas that wouldn’t support their traditional habits. Fry bread is seen as both a symbol of colonization and resilience. In this sweet children’s book, fry bread is seen as food, time, nation and “us” – a celebration of old and new, similarities and differences.
Tune into The Current from 4 to 5 p.m. on weekdays to catch live interviews impacting you, your family and your hometown as well as all of the biggest headlines of the day.
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