Joshua Whitehead gave us a glimpse into a beautiful life, and I was happy to be a part of the journey that Johnny took to find out more about himself while remembering where he came from and the beauty that comes from that.
Sometimes I can appreciate the beauty of writing or the wonder and power of a story, and still not really like it. I'm not sure that the point of this novel was to like it. Enjoy it, yes, and get the overall theme that he was trying to portray without liking it.
I am rating this as high as I am because the writing was beautiful and real and raw and while some of it was disturbing to me, it didn't detract from the beauty that was shown in Joshua Whitehead's words.
I grew up in the southern part of the US, so I had very limited interactions with Native Americans. That all changed when we moved to South Dakota, and met people who had grown up on reservations. I took some classes to prepare for fostering in SD, and one of those was focused on generational poverty and how the early American government had systematically destroyed the native populations and found new ways of dehumanizing an entire population of people.
After a few years of learning and reading, I still have no idea what it is like to live on a reservation or be raised on one. I will continue to educate myself by reading voices who have had these experiences, and I will not pretend that I understand anything about it. I will listen with an open heart and open mind and be continually ready to learn.