The Brave

maybe 4.5 stars?
I really really loved this. all the characters were so vibrant and likable - I absolutely loved Collin, his mother, his grandmother, and Orenda. I loved the magical realism elements and all the messages woven throughout. I also really liked the Native American rep and all of the elements that were included from that culture! such a sweet and powerful read.
although I did like & appreciate the OCD rep, it is also the one issue I had with the book. to me, it kind of felt like the test at the end "fixed" Collin and I don't like the idea that someone with mental health issues or a disability needs to be fixed or needs to get rid of their "ailment" to be better. I felt like the rest of the book was putting forth the message that something like OCD doesn't make you less than and focused on Collin learning to love and accept his differences, and in the end it kind of felt like that growth was all for nothing.
there are also some comments made about Native Americans and people in wheelchairs that I think could make some people feel uncomfortable but to me it came across as Collin just being unknowledgeable (keep in mind he is still really young!) and not the author's thoughts/feelings on these groups of people (and the author is Native American himself). just wanted to include as a minor warning!

I read most of this book with this expression solidly on my face:



OK so the main character Collin has some form of learning difference (it sounds like a type of OCD but they never really name it?) where when someone talks to him, he has to count up how many letters they said and then say that number out loud. So you say “Hi, Collin” and he says, “8. Hello, how are you?” Obviously this sounds like it would be frustrating and a big use of mental energy, and I could see some kids teasing Collin about it, but everyone in this book reacts as if Collin has said “FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR MOM,” they are like SO overwhelmed by him saying a number before he talks, it seemed like a really outsized reaction especially for a contemporary novel? And especially to be coming from the teachers? And for this to be a thing that has gotten him kicked out of like 5 schools?!? And again I don't want to minimize that this would definitely be a struggle but I didn't really understand why this was suuuuuuch a huge deal to everyone and why teachers would be sooooo infuriated at him for being disruptive, especially since he explicitly only says the numbers if someone is talking directly to him? It's not like he's just yelling numbers all the time. And again: sure there are definitely teachers who are dicks but why is EVERY teacher at EVERY school infuriated by this?? Get him an IEP jeez.

Also the kid bullies in this...like one boy PEES ON COLLIN. Just like whips it out and pees directly on him because he's so bully-activated by Collin's counting tic??? Excuse me???

In his author's notes Bird mentioned something about having a learning disability but was vague on details, I found this interview with him where he said, “ When I was young, it would take me an entire year to read a book. It was very hard. My brain would often wander and play silly games with me as I tried to focus, but I learned how to see it as a gift instead of a curse. And now I write books. Pretty cool, huh?” OK, sure.

ANYWAY so that's like Collin's deal, and he's half-white and half-Ojibwe but lives with his white dad, who, like everyone else in the book is completely infuriated by Collin's counting tic? So finally Collin gets kicked out of school for counting?????????? Again????? And this time Collin's dad abruptly sends him to live with his Ojibwe mother who Collin has never met before.

And Bird himself is also half-Ojibwe and it sounds like didn't grow up particularly connected to Ojibwe culture, and I think there could be something really interesting here where Collin comes to the reservation and has just internalized all of these white stereotypes about indigenous people, and it sounds like maybe that's something that Bird also grew up with? And I think there could be a really interesting book about interrogating those stereotypes but for me, this isn't it? It kind of just seems like Collin learns that the bad stereotypes are wrong but the “good” stereotypes are true?

It felt REALLY shaky to me as a white reader. I found this NYT review by an Ojibwe/Seneca author, David Treuer, who wrote this:

The place where all this happens, Fond du Lac Indian Reservation in Minnesota, is real, and the larger world in which “The Brave” is set is our world: airplanes, cars, bullies, math, pets, parents, gravity. Spirituality and what we could call magic appear as well, apportioned to the reservation and the Native American characters only. But realistic or fantastical, fiction must create a ground-floor reality. And the floor on which this novel is built is shaky.

Every Native American in it — in addition to being beautiful and wise — is nice, brave and witty. Everything is a lesson. And none of it, to my ear, is derived from Ojibwe culture or Ojibwe life as it's actually lived at Fond du Lac.

Reservations have long been magic meaning machines for outsiders: dirty prisons and proof of white perfidy if you've got a historical bent; diminished gardens tended by sage earthkeepers if you're into folklore; troubled places where policies fail if you're into politics. But in every case reservations are imagined as places apart, in but not of America, the land that time either rejected or forgot. “The Brave” is no exception.

At one point, Collin attends a ceremony of sorts. Ushered into a teepee with a fire in the middle, he is soon joined by four people wearing robes of different colors and holding matching stones, which they place in the fire. “The stones sizzle to life, sending gray clouds of smoke into the teepee. The heat immediately engulfs my body. I've never been to a sauna before, but I imagine this is what it feels like.” This isn't how Ojibwe ceremony works. This isn't even how physics works.

Writers don't get to make Native American life mean whatever they want it to mean. They don't get to do this because Native people have been erased, silenced and willfully misunderstood for too many years.

It's especially important that they not do it in fiction for young people, which may be the only stage of life when most Americans think about us at all, as our history and present tense is inaccurately and glancingly taught to them in school.

The world depicted in “The Brave” is not Native American life as I know it. It's summer camp, complete with exotic names and faux rituals; chock-full of crafts, bravery tests and self-discovery.

AND I'M NOT EVEN GETTING INTO THE NEIGHBOR GIRL WHO DIES OF ALS AND/OR MAYBE LITERALLY TURNS INTO A BUTTERFLY?????