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A review by piburnjones
Changes for Kaya: A Story of Courage by Janet Beeler Shaw
5.0
Again, reading for the first time as an adult, in advance of the American Girls podcast.
It's truly intense.
Everything around it is closure and follow-up:
- Kaya says she's rarely called Magpie now, and when it does come up, we see she handles it gracefully.
- Kaya decides her mourning period has ended and Kautsa welcomes her back to gathering duties.
- At the end, we see preparations for Brown Deer's wedding as visitors start to arrive.
- Kautsa tells Kaya that soon she will be ready to go on her vision quest.
I wish we were able to see more of the last two items (more in a minute), but this book only has room to gesture that they're coming.
Fun AG parallels:
- When Kaya spots the horses during an elk hunt, she contemplates going off on her own à la Kirsten and the honey tree. Fortunately, a pair of deus ex machina magpies jolt her back to her senses.
- Like Penny, Steps High is gone for three books, though not the same three. (Penny is missing from 2, 3, and 4; Steps High is missing from 3, 4, and 5.)
- Just like Penny, Steps High now has a foal.
- Like Changes for Kirsten, apparently we needed a big fire in the final book?? (No. Thank. You.)
I don't usually review the Peek Into the Past sections because I leave that to the actual historians, however: While they always try to pack in a lot, this one is truly A LOT. Here, have a brief history of 200+ years of oppression and genocide against Native Americans - and then watch the book try to paint a happily ever after in the last couple paragraphs. Yikes.
Thoughts about the series as a whole
Structure
The series broke with previous AG patterns in a lot of ways - title changes, no formal school, no birthday - but it still struggles against the AG format in more structural ways. It wants to be longer, and it doesn't want to be confined to age nine-ten. The books are practically bursting to tell us about Brown Deer's wedding and Kaya's vision quest and her wyakin and how she eventually takes on Swan Circling's name. All of those milestones are set up, but we don't get the payoff because Kaya isn't quite old enough yet. (I don't know why we don't get Brown Deer's wedding. Not enough room and wanting to keep the focus on Kaya, presumably, which is a bummer.)
You might even say this series is the opposite of Samantha's: Sam's stories are fine on their own but don't have much of a series arc. Kaya's stories have so much arc, they want to be one book.
As a bonus, that would have let Shaw stop explaining events of previous books every other page. I wonder if the two-volume "Beforever" editions from 2014 feel more cohesive.
Even as they are, though, the strong narrative through-lines between volumes mean that we get clear, continuous, consistent character development for Kaya as she gets better at checking her impulses and remembering to think about the good of the group before her own personal wants.
Representation
Not having any significant background knowledge about Nez Perce culture, I'd say Shaw does a perfectly nice job with these books: I have been entertained and also learned a few things along the way. The many, many cultural things that have to be explained are a bit of a burden on the narrative, but Shaw does her best. I still think they should have found a Native writer, though.
My only complaint is that it almost feels like everybody is too serene - like Shaw is afraid to let her Native characters be mean or petty or cranky. It's normal for AG books to be on the sugar-coated side of life, but there's definitely no Jiggy Nye in this series.
Zooming out to the macro view, diversity represents a particular challenge for American Girl, because they create specific characters while also asking each doll to represent an era. And in the case of the non-white characters, often they're ALSO asked to stand in for their entire race or ethnicity. Kaya has been the only Native character for nearly 20 years. Josefina has been the only historical Hispanic character for even longer. Addy stood alone for a long time until Cécile came along, only for Cécile to be archived after only a few years. In 35 years, AG still hasn't done an Asian American other than one archived best friend character.
So here's Kaya, one specific character, being asked to represent The Native American Experience. Even within her time period, you'd get very different stories if AG created a character who was Navajo or Seminole or Cherokee - just as you'd get very different stories among a group of 1765 characters in England, Italy and Poland. And I guess what is really bothering me here is that I struggle to picture AG doing another historical Native character and that makes me sad. Two reasons:
- Although the stories and culture would be very different for a character from another region, if you have another pre-colonial Native girl, you give the impression that Native people and culture disappeared as the United States took shape. (Which... not for lack of trying by the U.S. government.)
- On the other hand, if you place her after contact with Europeans, which tragedy would you like her to be a part of? The Wounded Knee girl? The Trail of Tears girl? The Indian boarding school girl who isn't allowed to use her own language? An Osage girl whose family is killed over oil rights?
Maybe what you do you set her in Oklahoma five or ten years after the Removal and part of the story is about keeping your culture alive in a new place, and deciding what changes are worth adopting.
Maybe the easiest answer is to add a Native girl to the Girl of the Year line, though personally my heart belongs to the historical line.
Where in history would you want another Native character set?
Spoiler
OF COURSE we get Steps High back, but Shaw makes us all sweat over it, reader and characters alike. (Brain while reading: AG WOULDN'T LET SHAW KILL THE HORSES, RIGHT???) That's the centerpiece of the book: everything leads up to the horses and the forest fire.Everything around it is closure and follow-up:
- Kaya says she's rarely called Magpie now, and when it does come up, we see she handles it gracefully.
- Kaya decides her mourning period has ended and Kautsa welcomes her back to gathering duties.
- At the end, we see preparations for Brown Deer's wedding as visitors start to arrive.
- Kautsa tells Kaya that soon she will be ready to go on her vision quest.
I wish we were able to see more of the last two items (more in a minute), but this book only has room to gesture that they're coming.
Fun AG parallels:
- When Kaya spots the horses during an elk hunt, she contemplates going off on her own à la Kirsten and the honey tree. Fortunately, a pair of deus ex machina magpies jolt her back to her senses.
- Like Penny, Steps High is gone for three books, though not the same three. (Penny is missing from 2, 3, and 4; Steps High is missing from 3, 4, and 5.)
- Just like Penny, Steps High now has a foal.
- Like Changes for Kirsten, apparently we needed a big fire in the final book?? (No. Thank. You.)
I don't usually review the Peek Into the Past sections because I leave that to the actual historians, however: While they always try to pack in a lot, this one is truly A LOT. Here, have a brief history of 200+ years of oppression and genocide against Native Americans - and then watch the book try to paint a happily ever after in the last couple paragraphs. Yikes.
Thoughts about the series as a whole
Structure
The series broke with previous AG patterns in a lot of ways - title changes, no formal school, no birthday - but it still struggles against the AG format in more structural ways. It wants to be longer, and it doesn't want to be confined to age nine-ten. The books are practically bursting to tell us about Brown Deer's wedding and Kaya's vision quest and her wyakin and how she eventually takes on Swan Circling's name. All of those milestones are set up, but we don't get the payoff because Kaya isn't quite old enough yet. (I don't know why we don't get Brown Deer's wedding. Not enough room and wanting to keep the focus on Kaya, presumably, which is a bummer.)
You might even say this series is the opposite of Samantha's: Sam's stories are fine on their own but don't have much of a series arc. Kaya's stories have so much arc, they want to be one book.
As a bonus, that would have let Shaw stop explaining events of previous books every other page. I wonder if the two-volume "Beforever" editions from 2014 feel more cohesive.
Even as they are, though, the strong narrative through-lines between volumes mean that we get clear, continuous, consistent character development for Kaya as she gets better at checking her impulses and remembering to think about the good of the group before her own personal wants.
Representation
Not having any significant background knowledge about Nez Perce culture, I'd say Shaw does a perfectly nice job with these books: I have been entertained and also learned a few things along the way. The many, many cultural things that have to be explained are a bit of a burden on the narrative, but Shaw does her best. I still think they should have found a Native writer, though.
My only complaint is that it almost feels like everybody is too serene - like Shaw is afraid to let her Native characters be mean or petty or cranky. It's normal for AG books to be on the sugar-coated side of life, but there's definitely no Jiggy Nye in this series.
Zooming out to the macro view, diversity represents a particular challenge for American Girl, because they create specific characters while also asking each doll to represent an era. And in the case of the non-white characters, often they're ALSO asked to stand in for their entire race or ethnicity. Kaya has been the only Native character for nearly 20 years. Josefina has been the only historical Hispanic character for even longer. Addy stood alone for a long time until Cécile came along, only for Cécile to be archived after only a few years. In 35 years, AG still hasn't done an Asian American other than one archived best friend character.
So here's Kaya, one specific character, being asked to represent The Native American Experience. Even within her time period, you'd get very different stories if AG created a character who was Navajo or Seminole or Cherokee - just as you'd get very different stories among a group of 1765 characters in England, Italy and Poland. And I guess what is really bothering me here is that I struggle to picture AG doing another historical Native character and that makes me sad. Two reasons:
- Although the stories and culture would be very different for a character from another region, if you have another pre-colonial Native girl, you give the impression that Native people and culture disappeared as the United States took shape. (Which... not for lack of trying by the U.S. government.)
- On the other hand, if you place her after contact with Europeans, which tragedy would you like her to be a part of? The Wounded Knee girl? The Trail of Tears girl? The Indian boarding school girl who isn't allowed to use her own language? An Osage girl whose family is killed over oil rights?
Maybe what you do you set her in Oklahoma five or ten years after the Removal and part of the story is about keeping your culture alive in a new place, and deciding what changes are worth adopting.
Maybe the easiest answer is to add a Native girl to the Girl of the Year line, though personally my heart belongs to the historical line.
Where in history would you want another Native character set?