Bad Indians Book Club - by Patty Krawec (Hardcover)

About the Book

Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin, leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, fiction, and other genres to ask: What worlds do books written by marginalized people invite us to inhabit? In Bad Indians Book Club, we encounter a potent challenge to all the stories settler colonialism tells.

Book Synopsis

"A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives." --Booklist, starred review

In this powerful reframing of the stories that make us, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, and fiction to ask: What worlds do books written by marginalized people describe and invite us to inhabit?

When a friend asked what books could help them understand Indigenous lives, Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin, gave them a list. This list became a book club and then a podcast about a year of Indigenous reading, and then this book. The writers in Bad Indians Book Club refuse to let dominant stories displace their own and resist the way wemitigoozhiwag--European settlers--craft the prevailing narrative and decide who they are.

In Bad Indians Book Club, we examine works about history, science, and gender as well as fiction, all written from the perspective of "Bad Indians"--marginalized writers whose refusal to comply with dominant narratives opens up new worlds. Interlacing chapters with short stories about Deer Woman, who is on her own journey to decide who she is, Krawec leads us into a place of wisdom and medicine where the stories of marginalized writers help us imagine other ways of seeing the world. As Krawec did for her friend, she recommends a list of books to fill in the gaps on our own bookshelves and in our understanding.

Becoming Kin, which novelist Omar El Akkad called a "searing spear of light," led readers to talk back to the histories they had received. Now, in Bad Indians Book Club comes a potent challenge to all the stories settler colonialism tells--stories that erase and appropriate, deny and deflect. Following Deer Woman, who is shaped by the profuse artistry of Krawec, we enter the multiple worlds Indigenous and other subaltern stories create. Together we venture to the edges of worlds waiting to be born.

Review Quotes

"A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives." ----Booklist, starred review

"Bad Indians Book Club is a compendium of worlds. From a lifetime of reading, there emerges a marriage of tapestry and map, a vision of the literary canon not as some secret handshake of the correctly educated but as a living, growing organism. . . . There's a dangerousness to a book like this. It's not enough to define the Good Indian, the Grateful Immigrant, the Untroublesome Minority. Nor is it enough to simply reject these designations. One must interrogate how they came to hold so much power, how they offer the willing participant so many crumbs of reward from colonialism's table." --Omar El Akkad, award-winning journalist and author of American War and What Strange Paradise

"A detailed and exploratory work of literary criticism, Bad Indians Book Club examines culture and colonization through a multitude of written works." ----Foreword

"Bad Indians Book Club is full of good medicine--challenging us to ask questions and bringing us home to ourselves. As Patty Krawec guides us into the deep wisdom wells of many people who journey in kinship, we consider how to hold the curiosity of care and stories, and what it means to imagine and create a future that integrates all our stories into a web of healing. Please buy this book, and celebrate the power of story in a weary yet flourishing world. --Kaitlin B. Curtice, award-winning author of Native and Living Resistance

"With Bad Indians Book Club, Patty Krawec gifts us a compelling investigation into the power of not just reading books but also doing so in community. Krawec makes the case for building your circle through reading, as a way of being in better relations with all our kin, including the land. Thinking deeply alongside other books, Bad Indians Book Club is a needed guide at a moment when books are under attack. Books are not just written culture; they are also oral culture, and Krawec illuminates this beautifully." --Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical physicist and author of The Disordered Cosmos

"This genre-crossing, shape-shifting, imagination-expanding book is for all who love to, and also need to, read. We tell stories to live, and this enlivening book reflects on all kinds of stories, each page suffused with Patty Krawec's unmistakable voice and generous, timeless wisdom." --Astra Taylor, documentary filmmaker and author of several books, including Remake the World and The Age of Insecurity

"In Bad Indians Book Club, Patty Krawec provides critical space for the ne'er-do-wells, disrupters, red sheep, box-busters, tricksters, and all of us rowdy relatives defying expectations. Indigenous people have always been proverbial thorns in the sides of colonizers, and this piercing book does an incredible job of letting the air out of today's imperialist narratives." --Taté Walker, award-winning Two Spirit Lakota storyteller and community-builder