Frieda shifted and yawned into the earth. The child’s sutured eyes and never-kissed lips greeted that 1950s winter sky, the color of heron wings, when her father-my grandfather-opened another hole in the mute earth and laid his second unforgiving child’s body to rest in her sister’s slender, waiting arms. The infant, stillborn, was given a name anyway but the wind buried the syllables under its cool tongue. Somewhere in Mattawan, Michigan, there is an infant buried on top of a thirteen-year-old girl ’s grave. To tell you any of these stories, I have to tell you the first. An excerpt of the book is followed by a Q&A with AFLW Senior Nonfiction Editor Christina Simon. Gorgeous and richly layered, Shonda Buchanan’s memoir, BLACK INDIAN, examines what it means to be African American and American Indian, as the author rewinds time to uncover the origins of her dual heritage–almost lost forever–hidden among family secrets, grievances and long-ago deaths.
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