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simonlorden's review
5.0
This book is absolutely brutal, and I don't think I can translate that into a star rating. It is very well-written and well-researched. I learned a lot. I didn't enjoy it at all.
There are two timelines as such - this book is both a personal memoir and a history book. First, it tells about the history of California Indians at the white-priest led Missions. The history is of course bloody, including rape, slavery, racism, violence and more.
But even though these parts were hard to read, you sort of expect those topics when you think about the history of Indigenous people. The parts that were truly "too much" for me were the memories of the author's own life. There are some quite explicit descriptions of child sexual abuse she suffered, as well as the physical abuse she and her siblings suffered at the hands of their father, and the sexual crimes his father committed against others. I admit I wasn't prepared for this and I don't really know how I feel about reading all of it. I hope the author got some catharsis or healing out of writing it down, though.
There are two timelines as such - this book is both a personal memoir and a history book. First, it tells about the history of California Indians at the white-priest led Missions. The history is of course bloody, including rape, slavery, racism, violence and more.
But even though these parts were hard to read, you sort of expect those topics when you think about the history of Indigenous people. The parts that were truly "too much" for me were the memories of the author's own life. There are some quite explicit descriptions of child sexual abuse she suffered, as well as the physical abuse she and her siblings suffered at the hands of their father, and the sexual crimes his father committed against others. I admit I wasn't prepared for this and I don't really know how I feel about reading all of it. I hope the author got some catharsis or healing out of writing it down, though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Racism, Rape, and Sexual assault
nmcannon's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I honestly don’t remember where I first heard of Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. It might have been my college’s class on indigenous people. Regardless, I knew I needed to read Miranda’s memoir. It was necessary for my personal improvement as well as my current solarpunk Los Angeles writing project.
As advertised in the blurb, Bad Indians stitches and shifts genre the same way Miranda must stitch and shift identities to survive. Primary historical sources are woven in with her stories and her poetry when prose can’t capture the pain. Grief, rage, and forced resilience are volatile themes. I really got a sense of how little time has passed since the colonial apocalypse. The intergenerational pain is still ongoing. Even the dedication–“To my parents, who survived each other”–made me pause and think. Other “oh!” moments were plentiful. The relationship between anthropologists and indigenous communities is fraught and strange. Scholars exploited elders for academic cred. New indigenous generations mine these scholars’ works for their own histories, because their pretentious papers are often the only surviving records. My history classes skipped over the fact that indigenous people were sold into slavery after the collapse of the mission system. Wtf, teachers.
A sizeable chunk of the book focused on the elementary school mission project. For those unfamiliar, in California, elementary schoolers create book reports and sometimes dioramas of a chosen mission. In my school, the project had some taint of sadness: both because of the massive indigenous death tolls and because, as a white person, our colonial coming destroyed this type of community. It was a strange place to inhabit, and Miranda’s insights made it even stranger. I’m definitely against the mission project now.
With Miranda’s compassionate rage and sorrowful determination, Bad Indians is an incisive read, if painful at times due to the subject matter. It feels like a Californian successor to Ma-Nee Chacaby’s A Two Spirit Journey autobiography. I’m filled with a new drive for justice that needs to be done. I really want to read Miranda’s other works.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide and Racism
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
handful_of_frogs's review
Somewhere between the lackluster writing style and the strange attempts at justifying abusing her children because of own trauma, I lost interest in the author.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, and Colonisation
averyt's review
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Colonisation
danareads99's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Sexual assault
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