I don't understand Greg Sarris, the award-winning, kick-ass Native American novelist's, novels.
I feel I should: I've won several prizes as a writer. Further, from girlhood private, in-group allusions were easy because I attended first grade on the Pala Indian reservation, my very first crush was on a Navajo boy (he could hit a baseball to any designated where) and I've worked with and for tribes upon and off of seven different reservations.
That has nothing to do with my ability to understand prize-winning English. There are several things about Mr. Sarris's work that leave me flummoxed, and I have yet to finish reading even one of his novels. He claims to come from a subtle people; maybe that's my (all-Anglo) problem.
In Watermelon Nights we are introduced to a con man - at length - and the Indian hero, named Severe, says he has a reaction to the guy. I don't get it because throughout the interchange I'm not sure which, or whether, one of the characters is being truthful. Upon rereading, I'm still not sure.
In Grand Avenue, a collection of short stories, Mr. Sarris flies in the face of received wisdom and "tells" us, in throw-away phrases, about appalling violence; this without harm to either the horrified reader's comfort or peace of mind. I am left wondering what in hell is going on because he didn't "show". (Show-don't-tell; remember?)
I have a stack of Mr. Sarris's books in front of me. Not even in his biography of Mabel McKay, Weaving the Dream (I finished that one) am I sure what point he makes when quoting her, his teacher and mentor. As a result neither am I sure of the woman's point, although he claims she usually had one.
This is a bummer. Greg Sarris is a hero.
Writer, professor, scholar, a whole bunch of other things including world-class hunk, and maybe most important of all a politician, Greg Sarris has achieved more in one short life, for more people, and I mean hundreds of thousands of us, than ninety percent of our elected officials. He is restoring open-space land to its rightful use, funding health and jobs for at least two Indian tribes, and providing cash benefits to dozens of other California tribes. His efforts restored tribal membership and leadership to a people which once was reduced by western perfidy from thousands of members to - get this - fourteen female slaves.
I don't understand Greg Sarris the novelist. Yet. You can bet the farm I'm about to try again. This time I'll read really slow.
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