Whiskey Tender
A Memoir
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3.8 • 12 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence
An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * An Esquire "Best Nonfiction Book" * A Washington Post "Book to read this summer" * An Elle "Best Book" * A Zibby Mag "Most Anticipated Book" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book to Cozy Up With" * The Millions "Most Anticipated" * An Electric Lit “Books By Women of Color to Read" * An Amazon Editors "Best Book of the Month" * Publishers Weekly "Best Book of the Year" A Parade "Best New Work By Indigenous Writers"
“We have more Native stories now, but we have not heard one like this. Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn’t know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history. It pulses and it aches, and it lifts, consistently. It threads together so much truth by the time we are done, what has been woven together equals a kind of completeness from brokenness, and a hope from knowing love and loss and love again by naming it so.” — Tommy Orange, National Bestselling Author of There There
Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.
Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A girl grows up caught between two cultures, never feeling truly welcome in either, in this powerful true story from Native American author Deborah Jackson Taffa. Born on a reservation in California, where her father was of the Quechan Nation and her mother was Hispanic and a devout Catholic, Deborah feels a sense of community on the reservation even though some reject her for her Latin heritage. Hoping to provide them with a better life, her father moves the family to New Mexico to pursue a new career, but Deborah soon becomes disillusioned by her parents’ desire to assimilate into mainstream American culture. Whiskey Tender is a richly detailed, compelling memoir that examines the dynamics of a family in turmoil as they chase after an American Dream they will never achieve. This is a remarkable, truly American story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taffa, the director of the MFA creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, debuts with a poignant and harrowing account of growing up in the 1980s as a "Native girl in a northwestern New Mexico town where cowboys still hated Indians." In vivid, nonlinear passages, Taffa describes her childhood, focusing especially on her complex relationships with her parents, who were raised on reservations and had aspirations of assimilation for Taffa and her siblings. Taffa's father, Edmond Jackson, was often in trouble with the law, most notably after his involvement in a fatal car accident; her mother, Lorraine Lopez Herrera, had such all-consuming depression that Taffa feared being home alone with her. Neither parent explored the history of Native American oppression in-depth with Taffa, who researched that history on her own as an adolescent and began to sour on the American Dream she'd grown up idealizing. Throughout, she's careful not to depict her circumstances as unique: "My story is as common as dirt," she writes. "Thousands of Native Americans in California, Arizona, and New Mexico could tell it." What makes Taffa's version exceptional is her visceral prose and sharp attunement to the tragedies of assimilation. This is a must-read.
Customer Reviews
Whiskey Tender - Excellent
This is a story that needed telling not only for the author but for all who chose to walk the path of self discovery and reflection. Beautifully written, it invokes the restless and often reckless spirit of youth as well as the wisdom that comes before the realization of where you’re going and where you have been. Excellent Book!