Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives

by Ray A. Young Bear

Overview

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. Although the backdrop of much of Young Bear's novel may be familiar — the conflicts over race, drugs, Vietnam and others that gripped America in the fifties, sixties, and seventies — Bearchild recounts his coming-of-age story from a distinct vantage point, as a member of the Mesquakie nation. From his childhood delight in Jell-O to his induction into the faith of his elders, Bearchild's journey is a uniquely American one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802134288
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	12/06/1996
Series:	Singular Lives: The Iowa Series in North
Pages:	261
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (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