Whiskey Tender
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Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.
Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
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Another installment in the ever-popular Poor Life Choices series, but with a twist: the author is self-aware. Sometimes a little too much so: her childhood reminiscences have more emotional depth than I can really buy. Sometimes I let it go, sometimes not so much, but this is a powerful book regardless. Part memoir, part history lesson, part ethnography, and one hundred percent filled with grace. Taffa is not gentle: not with colonizers, nor her family, nor herself. Throughout the book she expresses her childhood anger over shitty situations: at those who caused them and at those who perpetuate them. She doesn’t sugarcoat the violence, rage, helplessness she grew up seeing, or the systemic bigotry and humiliations she experienced everywhere she lived. She is candid about her childhood selfishnesses, in a way that demonstrates remarkable forgiveness toward herself and others. And in the end, this is not a spoiler, she makes good with her life.
It’s a complex book. The Taffa who wrote this is in her fifties, still (justifiably!) angry but now wise enough to focus her energy. This is a book for all of us in the Southwest, may we learn to see and prevent injustices.