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maiakobabe 's review for:
How a Mountain Was Made: Stories
by Greg Sarris
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
A collection of short stories by long time Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Greg Sarris; a writer I've been hearing about for years and am finally sitting down to read! These stories are all set around the Sonoma Mountain and Cotati, very close to where I grew up, and I loved being able to picture the foggy mornings, the many oaks, the quail, poppies, lupine, hawks, coyotes, and creeks in these stories. The book has a frame narrative of two crow sisters, Question Woman and Answer Woman, who introduce each story and also appear as characters in one. The stories are interwoven, nearly all set in the village by Copeland Creek where Coyote lives as headman with his wife Frog, his cousin Chicken Hawk, and his many neighbors. The stories use a lot of the kind of repetitive language that lends itself to memorization; I honestly didn't feel like sitting down and reading the book cover to cover wasn't the best way to experience them. It might have been better to flip the book open to a random story and read whichever one caught my eye, especially to read it out loud, either to myself or to a young listener. Maybe I'll get an opportunity to read it that way sometime to a nibling.