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jolynne's review against another edition
2.0
An interesting story you would never learn about in school unless maybe you live in or around Omaha Nebraska. It’s the telling of a Native woman that overcame tremendous odds to become a doctor. You’ll find some interesting women’s rights history in this story.
maddyb001's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. It fleshed out what it was like to be Native American during the Victorian era. It gave context to the Dawes Act and the rise of the Native American church. This made these pivotal events central instead of their usual footnote status. Also, this woman is such an inspiration in all she did for her community.
mirandaroo89's review against another edition
I did not like the writing style. It was very scattered and flowery, which made it hard to follow.
zalkacs's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
books_n_pickles's review against another edition
2.0
It is with heavy heart that I must admit defeat. The writing style of this book is just so very, very far from my preference for a nonfiction book, and the focus is shifted far enough away from the subjects that most interest me, that I'm not going to press on.
I want to stress that Susan La Flesche's story--indeed, the story of her whole family--is absolutely fascinating, and I would love to see a nice, fat book with even more details about everyone, from the Omaha chief who appointed her father his heir to her sister who chose to remain on Omaha land to raise children and teach. But I would also really--and I mean really--like to see such a book have end notes in it. Starita states that he chose not to use notes because they would disrupt the flow of the story, but it made me a tad suspicious to have no frame of reference every time he described Susan La Flesche's emotions. (Except for the first chapter, which he did let us know was sourced from a highly detailed account that La Flesche gave.)
Parts of the writing were also oddly repetitive: restating the obstacles that she had overcome so far, that she was equally comfortable with poetry readers and Omaha ceremonies (though I didn't read any examples of the latter), and that La Flesche "could not know" about conflicts happening concurrently at the national level. And several times a turn of phrase--like, "the half-blood Omaha and the full-blood Sioux"--would be used at the end of one paragraph and at the beginning of the following paragraph.
I have to admit, I was hoping for a lot more information about La Flesche's education growing up. What elements of traditional Omaha beliefs did her father permit the his children to learn? What was her time at the school in New Jersey like? There's plenty of textual evidence about how she fit in to white society, but were there ever moments when she stood out and stood up for her heritage? What did she think of attitudes towards American Indians playing out on the national stage? What did she think of her black classmates at Hampton? And what did a mid-to-late nineteenth century medical education consist of? I really was hoping for more information about medicine, particularly if there were any Omaha medical practices that La Flesche did approve of, or work with. And I wanted a more socially critical examination of her interactions with white America.
Even though the book didn't meet my expectations, the facts spoke for themselves: the details of white America's cruelty to the country's first inhabitants were as appalling as expected. And even the good-intentioned support of white people stung: the language used to praise La Fleshce is condescending in the extreme (I would have liked Starita to comment on this), and this behavior did seem to start impacting the way she wrote about her own people in letters to her family. I would have liked examples of ways that she preserved her Omaha heritage (as we are told she did), not just the ways she blended into white society.
And of course, shining through everything was La Flesche's brilliant resilience. I went into this book knowing that she overcame obstacles--but that didn't make it any less impressive to read about how she worked in correspondence with women she'd never met to scrape together the money to attend medical school, or how she graduated at the top of her class.
Like I said, I'm disappointed to be giving this up--but the ratio of "narrative" to "nonfiction", and literary flourishes to facts is far too high for my taste and comfort. If you like your history to read more like a story, you will love this book. If you, like me, occasionally try to vary your embarrassingly high fiction intake with distinctly differently-written nonfiction, this book probably won't be to your taste. If you have similar stylistic taste to me but are a better person than I am and are willing to push past style to read about this amazing woman and her family, I would love to hear your Cliffs Notes version. In the meantime, I will slink over to Wikipedia with my tail between my legs.
Quotes & Notes
37) "It is either civilization or extermination."
It may have been Joseph La Flesche and Big Elk's attitude, but that doesn't make it any less sad that a long-established way of life that wasn't European-based was not considered "civilization". It's not clear whether this thinking had been internalized by the "Young Men's Party" faction of the Omaha, or whether the use of "civilization" was used somewhat ironically in his sense. (It's also not clear whether this was Starita's encapsulation of a complex situation or something that someone said at the time. An end note might have settled that question...
55) As low as white America had stooped, I was still unpleasantly surprised to learn that a federal prosecutor tried to argue in 1879--after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--that the logic of Dred Scott ruling that denied citizenship to black people should be applied to American Indians. Fortunately (amazingly), the judge didn't buy it.
70) "Among the Indians, frustrated Senator Dawes once remarked, 'there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.'"
Oh boo-hoo, you narrow-minded capitalist.
79) One of the coolest things about this book is the number of interesting women La Flesche bumped elbows with. This wasn't like royal Europe, where you had a handful of Queens surrounded mostly by male politicians. Alice Fletcher turned out to have a bad streak in the end, but she still campaigned on incredibly hard on behalf of the Omaha, with Susan La Flesche's brother at her side, and helped them sort out land allotments that, according to Starita, calmed the tribe members' fears that they would be shipped off to a reservation down south. The next two quotes cover other cool women:
114) "'Far from being a period when women physicians were an anomaly, the late nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable increase in their numbers. In Boston, the peak was reached in 1900 when women physicians accounted for 18.2 percent of the city's doctors."
Just to be clear, this wasn't the all-time peak. In 2014, 40% of doctors in Boston were women.
126) "Susan and her classmates (including one from India, one from Syria, and another from Japan)..."
What! I want to read about all of them! I think I just need a more-factual-than-flowery book about women practicing medicine through the ages--that would probably hit the spot for me.
The views and opinions expressed in this review are my own and should not be construed as representing those of my company.
I want to stress that Susan La Flesche's story--indeed, the story of her whole family--is absolutely fascinating, and I would love to see a nice, fat book with even more details about everyone, from the Omaha chief who appointed her father his heir to her sister who chose to remain on Omaha land to raise children and teach. But I would also really--and I mean really--like to see such a book have end notes in it. Starita states that he chose not to use notes because they would disrupt the flow of the story, but it made me a tad suspicious to have no frame of reference every time he described Susan La Flesche's emotions. (Except for the first chapter, which he did let us know was sourced from a highly detailed account that La Flesche gave.)
Parts of the writing were also oddly repetitive: restating the obstacles that she had overcome so far, that she was equally comfortable with poetry readers and Omaha ceremonies (though I didn't read any examples of the latter), and that La Flesche "could not know" about conflicts happening concurrently at the national level. And several times a turn of phrase--like, "the half-blood Omaha and the full-blood Sioux"--would be used at the end of one paragraph and at the beginning of the following paragraph.
I have to admit, I was hoping for a lot more information about La Flesche's education growing up. What elements of traditional Omaha beliefs did her father permit the his children to learn? What was her time at the school in New Jersey like? There's plenty of textual evidence about how she fit in to white society, but were there ever moments when she stood out and stood up for her heritage? What did she think of attitudes towards American Indians playing out on the national stage? What did she think of her black classmates at Hampton? And what did a mid-to-late nineteenth century medical education consist of? I really was hoping for more information about medicine, particularly if there were any Omaha medical practices that La Flesche did approve of, or work with. And I wanted a more socially critical examination of her interactions with white America.
Even though the book didn't meet my expectations, the facts spoke for themselves: the details of white America's cruelty to the country's first inhabitants were as appalling as expected. And even the good-intentioned support of white people stung: the language used to praise La Fleshce is condescending in the extreme (I would have liked Starita to comment on this), and this behavior did seem to start impacting the way she wrote about her own people in letters to her family. I would have liked examples of ways that she preserved her Omaha heritage (as we are told she did), not just the ways she blended into white society.
And of course, shining through everything was La Flesche's brilliant resilience. I went into this book knowing that she overcame obstacles--but that didn't make it any less impressive to read about how she worked in correspondence with women she'd never met to scrape together the money to attend medical school, or how she graduated at the top of her class.
Like I said, I'm disappointed to be giving this up--but the ratio of "narrative" to "nonfiction", and literary flourishes to facts is far too high for my taste and comfort. If you like your history to read more like a story, you will love this book. If you, like me, occasionally try to vary your embarrassingly high fiction intake with distinctly differently-written nonfiction, this book probably won't be to your taste. If you have similar stylistic taste to me but are a better person than I am and are willing to push past style to read about this amazing woman and her family, I would love to hear your Cliffs Notes version. In the meantime, I will slink over to Wikipedia with my tail between my legs.
Quotes & Notes
37) "It is either civilization or extermination."
It may have been Joseph La Flesche and Big Elk's attitude, but that doesn't make it any less sad that a long-established way of life that wasn't European-based was not considered "civilization". It's not clear whether this thinking had been internalized by the "Young Men's Party" faction of the Omaha, or whether the use of "civilization" was used somewhat ironically in his sense. (It's also not clear whether this was Starita's encapsulation of a complex situation or something that someone said at the time. An end note might have settled that question...
55) As low as white America had stooped, I was still unpleasantly surprised to learn that a federal prosecutor tried to argue in 1879--after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--that the logic of Dred Scott ruling that denied citizenship to black people should be applied to American Indians. Fortunately (amazingly), the judge didn't buy it.
70) "Among the Indians, frustrated Senator Dawes once remarked, 'there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.'"
Oh boo-hoo, you narrow-minded capitalist.
79) One of the coolest things about this book is the number of interesting women La Flesche bumped elbows with. This wasn't like royal Europe, where you had a handful of Queens surrounded mostly by male politicians. Alice Fletcher turned out to have a bad streak in the end, but she still campaigned on incredibly hard on behalf of the Omaha, with Susan La Flesche's brother at her side, and helped them sort out land allotments that, according to Starita, calmed the tribe members' fears that they would be shipped off to a reservation down south. The next two quotes cover other cool women:
114) "'Far from being a period when women physicians were an anomaly, the late nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable increase in their numbers. In Boston, the peak was reached in 1900 when women physicians accounted for 18.2 percent of the city's doctors."
Just to be clear, this wasn't the all-time peak. In 2014, 40% of doctors in Boston were women.
126) "Susan and her classmates (including one from India, one from Syria, and another from Japan)..."
What! I want to read about all of them! I think I just need a more-factual-than-flowery book about women practicing medicine through the ages--that would probably hit the spot for me.
The views and opinions expressed in this review are my own and should not be construed as representing those of my company.
elizabethlk's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to fall in love with this. I've only listened to a few audiobooks so far (and up until this one, I had been enjoying everything I had heard). I had also only heard of Susan LaFlesche when I stumbled across this book, and I thought she sounded fascinating. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy this nearly as much as I wanted to.
Susan LaFlesche was an incredibly interesting woman, both for her time and in general. A Warrior of the People was filled with many details that were interesting, intriguing, exciting. Carrington MacDuffie did this particular narration (my first of anything I have heard her narrate), and I enjoyed it. Her tone was soothing, informative, and straight forward. What makes me give this book a two star rating is its writing. The book was formatted so strangely. I felt like the author jumped from topic to topic, sometimes with no rhyme or reason. I also feel like the author couldn't decide what timeline we were following; the year seemed to jump around with little consistency. It mostly followed a chronological order, which made it so much more frustrating when the story jumped way into the future or way into the past. I found myself having to relisten to parts just to determine when in the story I was, where in the story I was, and what was happening that made it so. I liked that information was shared about her parents, her siblings, her children, and the society and culture around her. I just felt like it jumped around in a way that didn't feel cohesive.
I wanted to love this. With such fascinating content (and definitely right up my alley), and a decent reading, I felt like it should have been my thing completely. Unfortunately the chaos it is presented in made it rather difficult to enjoy.
Susan LaFlesche was an incredibly interesting woman, both for her time and in general. A Warrior of the People was filled with many details that were interesting, intriguing, exciting. Carrington MacDuffie did this particular narration (my first of anything I have heard her narrate), and I enjoyed it. Her tone was soothing, informative, and straight forward. What makes me give this book a two star rating is its writing. The book was formatted so strangely. I felt like the author jumped from topic to topic, sometimes with no rhyme or reason. I also feel like the author couldn't decide what timeline we were following; the year seemed to jump around with little consistency. It mostly followed a chronological order, which made it so much more frustrating when the story jumped way into the future or way into the past. I found myself having to relisten to parts just to determine when in the story I was, where in the story I was, and what was happening that made it so. I liked that information was shared about her parents, her siblings, her children, and the society and culture around her. I just felt like it jumped around in a way that didn't feel cohesive.
I wanted to love this. With such fascinating content (and definitely right up my alley), and a decent reading, I felt like it should have been my thing completely. Unfortunately the chaos it is presented in made it rather difficult to enjoy.
lauren_epps's review against another edition
3.0
Dr. Susan was an incredible woman who did incredible things all for the sake of her Native American people who were done so very wrong by the US government. My issue with this book is the lack of focus on her, the woman and her VAST accomplishments. The other subjects brought up in the book (alcoholism, different "battles/massacres" between the Native Americans and the military, her father's full history, her sister's histories and accomplishments (they should definitely be mentioned, but the author went into greater detail that I thought necessary)). These extra topics serve a purpose, but the timelines were jerky and it detracted from the reader's focus on Dr. Susan.
The way that Native Americans and formerly enslaved Africans were treated in the US at the time of Dr. Susan was deplorable. It is great to hear that such an amazing woman was able to rise from the cruelty and use everything she learned and was privileged to obtain to help her people, even when they hotly resisted her.
Dr. Susan's story is definitely one of inspiration. I did love that her father was the catalyst for her seeking education and that her sisters all were civil warriors in their own right.
I highly recommend reading this book. If you don't come away from this book a little angry (regarding the treatment of Native Americans) and inspired by Dr. Susan and her whole family, I will question if you really read it.
The way that Native Americans and formerly enslaved Africans were treated in the US at the time of Dr. Susan was deplorable. It is great to hear that such an amazing woman was able to rise from the cruelty and use everything she learned and was privileged to obtain to help her people, even when they hotly resisted her.
Dr. Susan's story is definitely one of inspiration. I did love that her father was the catalyst for her seeking education and that her sisters all were civil warriors in their own right.
I highly recommend reading this book. If you don't come away from this book a little angry (regarding the treatment of Native Americans) and inspired by Dr. Susan and her whole family, I will question if you really read it.
skyturtles's review against another edition
3.0
The content here is so important - for Nebraska history, for the Omaha people, for American women. Can you imagine a Netflix series about her life? Because I certainly can! Susan La Flesche and her legacy deserve so much attention. However, this biography is quite scattered and hard to follow at times. I hope this book inspires another.
frumiouslyalice's review against another edition
5.0
So this year I tried to be reading most Native American books this month. Unfortunately, after the first week, I felt depressed enough about my country that I felt that I didn't want to read anything that would make that feeling worse.
This isn't to say that this book makes me feel great about this country - it doesn't. The most engaging parts of the book to me were actually how the author is able to portray a painfully changing world of Susan's people, the Omaha. A painful and incredibly unfair one. Despite how hard she works to do things the right way, to appeal to the government, to make it official law as opposed to an unwritten one, Native Americans (Omaha and others) are hounded by the apathy or straight up manipulation of white people around nearly every corner. The nuance of how some aspects of white culture are beneficial, but huge swaths of it are outright harmful, of how they needed to assimilate, but at the cost of certain aspects of culture, how Susan occasionally feeds into the public mindset of Native people once having been "savages" - these are all difficult, complicated things that are properly given their difficult, complicated due. But most importantly, it never shies away from the damning that America deserves. It's complicated, but it's not excusable.
On top of this, the subject of the book is one of the most intensely amazing people I've had the pleasure to read about. It would be a simplification to say that the doctor had no faults, but everything she did she did with the passionate fervor and a deep understanding of people. The type of person who you'd try to dig into her past to slander and find nothing but an insect she harmed inadvertently and still feels guilty about. To say she gave her life for the benefit of her people would be a painfully quick way to sum it up, but it's true. The wholesome admiration I felt for this woman, whose kindness compelled her to not only medical practice, but for lobbying and missionary work can't be understated. She was an amazing person, and there is a passion to the way that the book is written that makes you wholly believe it.
The writing is readable. I don't have complaints about the simplicity - the author having been a reporter likely means that their style is used to being read by a varied audience, as newspaper articles are supposed to be. But the fact that it isn't didactic or overwritten shouldn't mean that it's for a younger audience, and its accessibility is a nice feature, especially for a historical figure otherwise unknown. I have more problems with books that are dense and are trying to convolute things with long words that don't need it. The story is plenty complex for the complex lives and people in it. This book was not difficult to gobble up, but that was to its benefit.
A worthy, worthy read about a worthy, worthy human.
This isn't to say that this book makes me feel great about this country - it doesn't. The most engaging parts of the book to me were actually how the author is able to portray a painfully changing world of Susan's people, the Omaha. A painful and incredibly unfair one. Despite how hard she works to do things the right way, to appeal to the government, to make it official law as opposed to an unwritten one, Native Americans (Omaha and others) are hounded by the apathy or straight up manipulation of white people around nearly every corner. The nuance of how some aspects of white culture are beneficial, but huge swaths of it are outright harmful, of how they needed to assimilate, but at the cost of certain aspects of culture, how Susan occasionally feeds into the public mindset of Native people once having been "savages" - these are all difficult, complicated things that are properly given their difficult, complicated due. But most importantly, it never shies away from the damning that America deserves. It's complicated, but it's not excusable.
On top of this, the subject of the book is one of the most intensely amazing people I've had the pleasure to read about. It would be a simplification to say that the doctor had no faults, but everything she did she did with the passionate fervor and a deep understanding of people. The type of person who you'd try to dig into her past to slander and find nothing but an insect she harmed inadvertently and still feels guilty about. To say she gave her life for the benefit of her people would be a painfully quick way to sum it up, but it's true. The wholesome admiration I felt for this woman, whose kindness compelled her to not only medical practice, but for lobbying and missionary work can't be understated. She was an amazing person, and there is a passion to the way that the book is written that makes you wholly believe it.
The writing is readable. I don't have complaints about the simplicity - the author having been a reporter likely means that their style is used to being read by a varied audience, as newspaper articles are supposed to be. But the fact that it isn't didactic or overwritten shouldn't mean that it's for a younger audience, and its accessibility is a nice feature, especially for a historical figure otherwise unknown. I have more problems with books that are dense and are trying to convolute things with long words that don't need it. The story is plenty complex for the complex lives and people in it. This book was not difficult to gobble up, but that was to its benefit.
A worthy, worthy read about a worthy, worthy human.