#Notyourprincess

3.5. Important topic with all pieces created by Native women. However, the layout itself has some problems. The full color pages are beautiful but the book is then cut to a size that's relatively unworkable in a HS library. Also, though the content was arranged into chapters, it was still relatively disjointed, there wasn't flow, and the grapbic style of the pull quotes (some words large and rest small) made than hard to read and contextualize. Bought a copy for the library and will sell it, hoping it will find it's audience .

I received a galley of this book from Annick Press via NetGalley. This has not influenced my opinions or thoughts about the book.

With #ownvoices and #weneeddiversebooks rising as major trends in the literary community, I'm starting to fill in the gaps. But I've been lax in reading enough about Native Americans and Indigenous Americans by Native Americans and Indigenous Americans.

#NotYourPrincess is a fantastic collection of poetry, prose, and artwork written by and about Native American women and reclaims the conversation. It presents a perspective that many of us know embarrassingly little about. I loved that this book did not focus solely on the U.S. but instead embracing the many tribes and communities residing in Canada too.

My one critique of this book is that I would have preferred a longer volume with additional articles and critical thought pieces from writers and authors. But that being said, if you're looking to expand beyond Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie, this is a great place to start. I'd recommend picking this one up in print since the artwork is really beautiful.

If I could give this more stars, I would give it at least 10! This book is so good. It is powerful and inspiring and sad and hopeful and strong. There are so many wonderful words and pictures. This will stick with me for so long. I also liked that each woman's tribe is listed. It gave me the opportunity to learn a little more about these tribes.
I will be reading this again and learning more about these tribes.

This is a great companion to Dreaming in Indian (which I also enjoyed but it's great to have a volume focused on women)! Like that book, the mixed media format reminds me of a zine or yearbook, in a good way. It's a great way to just get drawn in and encounter a lot of voices, with a combination of humor, insight, anger, sorrow, beauty...often all in the same piece.

Although I do think the large-size format works for this, I think librarians might need to do something extra to boost this to teen readers–I know often older kids find that large books like this come across as looking like baby picture books, but I think once they get past the size, the style and content has a lot to offer.