On the rez - Frazier, IanSummary: A writer visits the Pine Ridge Reservation with an old Sioux acquaintance and shares his observations of the heroism, humor, and tough spirit that keep these people afloat in the midst of crushing poverty. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Frazier writes urbane and witty essays for magazines such as the New Yorker, and he writes books that exemplify the best of immersion journalism. Energetically detailed first-person narratives, they combine detectivelike observations with history, travelogue, and social commentary. The first and most popular of these works was Great Plains (1989), in which Frazier reported on his journey from New York across the great American West. A meeting with an Oglala Sioux named Le War Lance proved crucial to his exploration, and Le plays an even larger role in Frazier's second foray. After Frazier and his family moved from Manhattan to Missoula, Montana, he decided to write about life on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Le, a man of courage and convictions, a teller of tall tales, a heavy drinker, and a master manipulator, provided entree into the homes of family and friends as long as Frazier kept his wallet and car at the ready. In between recounting every nuance of every experience, Frazier profiles Le and his family, American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, historical personages including Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, and SuAnne Marie Big Crow, a high-school basketball star who epitomized the best and most tragic aspects of Pine Ridge. He also writes with indelible precision about the reservation's dwellings and treacherous roads and highways as well as the grim and violent town of White Clay, Nebraska. By weaving the past with the present and illuminating so many aspects of Indian life, Frazier's frank and adroitly improvised narrative will stand as one of literature's most complex yet most clarifying testaments to the essence of American Indian culture. ((Reviewed November 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews
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