Joseph Bruchac
For a good many years now, Tim Tingle has been one of my favorite American storytellers. Invariably, his narratives honor the Choctaw traditions of his ancestors. Yet they are told with such poetic clarity that any good listener, whether Indian or not, will feel invited into that world, a place of memory and song, courage, magical reality, and the extraordinary lives of everyday folks. Delivered in Tim's quiet, down-home Indian voice, they're the sort of lesson stories that stick to you like a burr.
The good news for readers is that these written versions of Tim's tales
lose none of the gentle intensity of his memorable oral tellings. Walking
the Choctaw Road, like one of those old Choctaw chants that kept the people'
s feet going along the long journey, will stay with you and lend you some of
its strength. Cross the river with these stories-they'll give you safe
passage.
—author of Tell Me a Tale
Publishers Weekly
In Walking the Choctaw Road: Stories from Red People Memory, storyteller Tim Tingle shares what it means to be Choctaw through 11 moving tales. His subjects range from the "Trail of Tears" to "Tony Byars," one man's account of finding friendship amidst enormous sorrow during his seven-year confinement in an Indian boarding school. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A superb storyteller, Tingle has collected Choctaw tales from his great-grandfather's account of the Trail of Tears to his own tale of a summer with his father. That summer the two-with contrasting ideas and thoughts-worked side-by-side and came to respect one another. The battle, Tingle says, went on for 20 more years until during the last ten when they became best friends. But the most gripping tale is Tingle's account of his own youth and the day he realized his grandmother was blind, and the day years later when the family all gathered as his grandmother underwent one of the first eye-transplant surgeries. Poetic language and a compelling but quiet voice honor the Native American traditions for both the native and the non-native reader. This collection may need some advertising, but readers who discover it will come to appreciate the tales. (Short stories. 10-15)
