A review by dlberglund
Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah A. Miranda

4.0

I don't know that I've read a book like this before. Parts of it were personal memoir, letting us peer into her childhood full of addiction-soaked abuse and terror, and occasionally love and learning. Parts of it were poetry, both personal and with a bigger lens. Parts of it were history lessons, including scans and passages from historical documents from the California mission system and ethnographers’ attempts to catalog the stories of the indigenous people who had been colonized (tortured, enslaved) by the mission system. I learned so much about the author’s Chumash and Esselen history, knowing it still only scratches the surface. My favorite part was the language diary section toward the end, when Deborah enrolls in intensive summer language sessions, first to learn Spanish and then to learn how to learn her ancestors’ Native languages, using historical records and university collections. I certainly wouldn't recommend this book for everyone, but it was a perspective and a history I needed to read right now.