Shell Shaker
A novel that links Choctaw history and a modern crime through a circular sense of time, family memory, and community power.
Work Information
Distant past and present overlap as one family story.
By moving between ancestral wounds and a present-day crime, the novel presents Choctaw memory and storytelling with force.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Aunt Lute Books
- Published
- 2001-09-01
- Pages
- 240 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 1.52 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781879960619
- ISBN-10
- 1879960613
- Price
- 3463 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Action & Adventure
Winner of the 2002 American Book Award Why was Red Shoes, the most formidable Choctaw warrior of the 18th century, assassinated by his own people? Why does his death haunt Auda Billy, an Oklahoma Choctaw woman, accused in 1991 of murdering Choctaw Chief Redford McAlester? Moving between the known details of Red Shoes' life and the riddle of McAlester's death, this novel traces the history of the Billy women whose destiny it is to solve both murders—with the help of a powerful spirit known as the Shell Shaker . Very few writers can shift a narrative skillfully between centuries and negotiate an enemy language, tribal governments and a slew of spirits while doing so. Very few can translate the soul of such a legacy into words, and allow the shape of such a story to weave itself, like stomp dancers around the fire, naturally. LeAnne Howe has done it. Shell Shaker is an elegant, powerful and knock out story. I’m blown away. — Joy Harjo, Mvskoke poet and musician LeAnne Howe has written a gripping and magical tale of ancient Choctaw blood lust and unbreakable family love in modern-day Oklahoma. Shell Shaker is a delicious read, a powerful journey into the hearts of some incredibly strong Indian women. — Adrian C. Louis, author of Skins A brilliant, surprising, hilarious, heartbreaking work that layers vision upon vision and cracks America wide open. LeAnne Howe has created a literary landscape you have never seen before and will never forget . — Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer
“I became a writer so I could go off in all directions, meet new people, write about what I’ve hungered to know.” As a 2010-2011 William J. Fulbright Scholar, LeAnne Howe lived in Amman, Jordan to research her forthcoming novel, Memoir of a Choctaw Indian in the Arab Revolt, 1917, set in Bilaad ash Sham, and Allen, Oklahoma. LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation and writes fiction, poetry, screenplays, creative non-fiction, plays, and scholarship that primarily deal with American Indian experiences. In 2012, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, and she also received the 2012 USA Ford Fellowship in the Literature category. Her short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review, Fiction International, Callaloo, Story, Yalobusha Review, Cimarron Review, Platte Valley Review, and elsewhere, and has been translated in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. She has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Writers Residency, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her first novel, Shell Shaker (Aunt Lute Books, 2001), received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002. Equinoxes Rouge , the French translation, was the 2004 finalist for Prix Medici Estranger, one of France’s top literary awards. Evidence of Red (Salt Publishing, UK, 2005) won the Oklahoma Book Award for poetry in 2006, and the Wordcraft Circle Award for 2006. Howe’s second novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (Aunt Lute Books, 2007), was the Hampton University’s Read-In-Selection for 2009-2010. Her latest book with Aunt Lute is Choctalking on Other Realities (2013). In 2011, Howe was awarded the Tulsa Library Trust Award for her work as an American Indian writer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Reviews
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Great value
Very interesting book. I had to read it for a class on Native American Literature.
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Impressive
LeAnne Howe carefully sustains and interweaves several stories to a conclusion. Her use of Choctaw language is informative. She has created interesting characters and plot. A must read.
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Interesting read
If you're looking for something different this is a good choice. Easy to follow and well written. Two thumbs up.
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Great book.
Good read. Should be made into a movie.
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Wonderful
This is a truly inspiring novel. I love to explore other worlds, and this trip into Choctaw reality was just that - a trip.