Mohawk Trail by Beth Brant

Mohawk Trail

Beth Brant

This book gathers poetry, essays, memoir, and fiction by Native American writer Beth Brant. Brant uses these genres to examine various kinds of family: blood parents and children, siblings of like-minded politics, the mother-sister patter that informs lesbian couplings. She is especially wise about the necessity to re-create family in cultures such as her own, which other cultures have tried to eradicate.

Review

Beth Brant is Degonwadonti whose father is Joseph of the Mohawk Turtle Clan from the Bay of Quinte Theyindenaga reserve in Ontario. Degonwadonti is Beth Brant whose mother is Hazel of Irish/Scots ancestry from Michigan. Mohawk Trail is a collection of singing stories that remember and honor it all. In the first section, called ‘Native Origins,’ we hear the legends of the grandmothers’ birth traditions in the Longhouse with the fire that must not go out, ‘the smell of wood smoke, sweat and the sharp-sweet odor of blood,’ and the whisper ‘Don’t forget who you are.’ ‘Detroit Songs’ sings stories of people in their own sweet, sad voices: ‘Daddy’ talks about work – ‘it was every minute you thought about a job, about feedin’ your family.’ In ‘Garnet Lee,’ Beth’s maternal grandmother tells about a Kentucky mining town, housekeeping jobs, black lung, and mine explosions. ‘Terri,’ Beth’s Chippewa/’Pollack,’ friend relates why she dresses up sexy to dance for tips in a lesbian bar on the weekends; ‘Danny’ tells how he loved wearing dresses and why he had to kill himself; and ‘Mama’ talks about taking care of ‘all those kids.’ The last selections, ‘Long Stories,’ describe two mothers living one hundred years apart whose children were stolen, and show us the life of a ‘half-breed’ growing-up girl in Detroit. Each story a song, each song a poem, each poem a story, Mohawk Trail reverberates with the rhythmic strength of courageous and enduring love. — For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let’s Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. — From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

Daddy’s Story

For All My Grandmothers

Her Name Is Helen

Native Origin

Coyote Learns A New Trick

Danny

The Fifth Floor, 1967

Garnet Lee

Indian Giver

A Long Story

Mama

Mohawk Trail

Robbing Peter To Pay Paul

A Simple Act

Terri

— Table of Poems from Poem Finder® –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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