Teen Literature by Native Authors
List Inspired by Native Scholar Debbie Reese
Apple in the Middle
"Apple Starkington turned her back on her Native American heritage the moment she was called a racial slur for someone of white and Indian descent, not that she really even knew how to be an Indian. Too bad the white world doesn't accept her either. And so begins her quirky habits to gain acceptance. Apple's name, chosen by her Indian mother on her deathbed, has a double meaning: treasured apple of my eye, but also the negative connotation-a person who is red, or Indian, on the outside, but white on the inside.After her wealthy father gives her the boot one summer, Apple reluctantly agrees to visit her Native American relatives on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota for the first time. Apple learns to deal with the culture shock of Indian customs and the Native Michif language, while she tries to deal with a vengeful Indian man who loved her mother in high school but now hates Apple because her mom married a white man.As Apple meets her Indian relatives, she shatters Indian stereotypes and learns what it means to find her place in a world divided by color."
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#NotYourPrincess : voices of Native American women
Co-author: Mary Beth Leatherdale "Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #Not Your Princess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible."-- Provided by publisher
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Trickster Native American tales: a graphic collection
"This extraordinary graphic novel depicts traditional Native American trickster tales with inspired artists and native writers."
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The Marrow Thieves
"In this futuristic dystopian novel for teens, the Indigenous people of North America are on the run in a fight for survival."
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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People
Adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza "Going beyond the story of America as a country "discovered" by a few brave men in the "New World," Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity. The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history"-- Provided by publisher.
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My Name Is Not Easy
"Luke knows his I nupiaq name is full of sounds white people can't say. He knows he'll have to leave it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School things are different. Instead of family, there are students--Eskimo, Indian, White--who line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there's some kind of war going on. And instead of comforting words like tutu and maktak, there's English. Speaking I nupiaq--or any native language--is forbidden. And Father Mullen, whose fury is like a force of nature, is ready to slap down those who disobey. Luke struggles to survive at Sacred Heart. But he's not the only one. There's smart-aleck Amiq, a daring leader--if he doesn't self destruct; Chickie, blond and freckled, a different kind of outsider; and small quiet Junior, noticing everything and writing it all down. Each has their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School--and in the wider world--will never be the same."
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This Place: 150 Years Retold
"An anthology of stories from Canada's 150 years told from an Indigenous perspective."
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The Round House
"The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction. One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture."
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Abandon Me: A Memoir
"In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection -- with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession -- and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another. At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer's life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal. "-- Provided by publisher.
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Apple (Skin To The Core)
"How about a book that makes you barge into your boss's office to read a page of poetry from? That you dream of? That every movie, song, book, moment that follows continues to evoke in some way? The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking."
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Give Me Some Truth
"In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves."
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If I Ever Get Out of Here: A Novel with Paintings
"Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him -- people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan's side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis's home -- will he still be his friend? Acclaimed adult author Eric Gansworth makes his YA debut with this wry and powerful novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock 'n' roll."
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A History of Kindness: Poems
"Poems from Pulitzer finalist Linda Hogan explore new and old ways of experiencing the vagaries of the body and existing in harmony with earth's living beings."
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Native Writers: Voices of Power
Co-authored by Lyle Ernst "Learn about the life events and aspirations that shaped the voices of ten influential Native writers, whose novels, short stories and plays encompass the soul of Native life. Learn how these writers draw from personal experience to create situations and characters that are entertaining and poignant."--from publisher's description.
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Hearts Unbroken
"When Louise Wolfe's first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It's her senior year, anyway, and she'd rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper's staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director's inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town."
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Rain Is Not My Indian Name
Illustrator: Lori Earley "Tired of staying in seclusion since the death of her best friend, a fourteen-year-old Native American girl takes on a photographic assignment with her local newspaper to cover events at the Native American summer youth camp."
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The Night Wanderer
"A mesmerizing blend of vampire thriller and coming-of-age story -- as a graphic novel."
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A Name Earned
"As the basketball playoffs draw near, Chocktaw teen Bobby Byington shares the legend of No Name with his teammates, who are dealing with family problems all too familiar to him."
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How I Became a Ghost, Book 1: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story
"A Choctaw boy tells the story of his tribe's removal from the only land its people had ever known, and how their journey to Oklahoma led him to become a ghost--one with the ability to help those he left behind."
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Code Talker Stories
"On these pages, the Navajo Code Talkers speak, in English and Navajo, about past and present. Laura Tohe, daughter of a Code Talker, interviewed many of the remaining Code Talkers, some of whom have since passed on. The Navajo language helped win World War II, and it lives on in this book, as the veterans truly share from their hearts, providing not only more battlefield details, but also revealing how their war experiences affected themselves and the following generations. Their children and grandchildren also speak about what it means to them today. Beautiful portraits accompany their words."
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The Lesser Blessed
"An eye-opening account of what it is like to be a vulnerable teenager in the modern world. Through the eyes of Larry Sole, a First Nation teenager filled with bravado and angst, comes the story of three unlikely friends isolated in a small rural town discovering what they can of life and love and racial tensions, in a world by a dark mystery from his past."
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Three Feathers
"Explores the power and grace of restorative justice in one Northern community and the cultural legacy that can empower future generations."
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Crazy Horse's Girlfriend: a novel
"Margaritte, an American-Indian teenager trapped in the Denver suburbs, deals drugs, gets pregnant, and fights against a life she hates."
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Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices
"A powerful and visually stunning anthology from some of the most groundbreaking Native artists working in North America today."
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Hidden Roots
"Although he is uncertain why his father is so angry and what secret his mother is keeping from him, eleven-year-old Sonny knows that he is different from his classmates in their small New York town."
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Killer of Enemies
"A post-Apocalyptic YA novel with a steampunk twist, based on an Apache legend."
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