{"id":58723,"date":"2019-09-18T01:46:04","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T01:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58723"},"modified":"2019-09-22T02:11:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T02:11:44","slug":"black-indian-a-memoir-by-shonda-buchanan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58723","title":{"rendered":"Black Indian: A Memoir by Shonda Buchanan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Indian: A Memoir by Shonda Buchanan<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Wayne State University Press<\/a>
\n2019-08-26
\n352 pages
\n7 black-and-white photos
\nSize: 6×9
\nPaperback ISBN: 9780814345801
\nEbook ISBN: 9780814345818<\/p>\n

Shonda Buchanan<\/strong><\/a>, Literary Editor
\nHarriet Tubman Press<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Black Indian<\/em>, searing and raw, is Amy Tan\u2019s<\/a> The Joy Luck Club<\/em><\/a> and Alice Walker\u2019s<\/a> The Color Purple<\/em><\/a> meets Leslie Marmon Silko\u2019s<\/a> Ceremony<\/em><\/a>\u2014only, this isn\u2019t fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, alcoholism, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan\u2019s memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family\u2019s legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society\u2019s ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance.<\/p>\n

Buchanan was raised as a Black woman, who grew up hearing cherished stories of her multi-racial heritage, while simultaneously suffering from everything she (and the rest of her family) didn\u2019t know. Tracing the arduous migration of Mixed Bloods, or Free People of Color<\/a>, from the Southeast<\/a> to the Midwest<\/a>, Buchanan tells the story of her Michigan<\/a> tribe\u2014a comedic yet manically depressed family of fierce women, who were everything from caretakers and cornbread<\/a> makers to poets and witches, and men who were either ignored, protected, imprisoned, or maimed\u2014and how their lives collided over love, failure, fights, and prayer despite a stacked deck of challenges, including addiction and abuse. Ultimately, Buchanan\u2019s nomadic people endured a collective identity crisis after years of constantly straddling two, then three, races. The physical, spiritual, and emotional displacement of American Indians who met and married Mixed or Black slaves and indentured servants at America\u2019s early crossroads is where this powerful journey begins.<\/p>\n

Black Indian<\/em> doesn\u2019t have answers, nor does it aim to represent every American\u2019s multi-ethnic experience. Instead, it digs as far down into this one family\u2019s history as it can go\u2014sometimes, with a bit of discomfort. But every family has its own truth, and Buchanan\u2019s search for hers will resonate with anyone who has wondered “maybe there\u2019s more than what I\u2019m being told.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Black Indian,” searing and raw, is Amy Tan\u2019s “The Joy Luck Club” and Alice Walker\u2019s “The Color Purple” meets Leslie Marmon Silko\u2019s “Ceremony”\u2014only, this isn\u2019t fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,395,11,459,8,17,3015,20],"tags":[5754,30142,7737],"class_list":["post-58723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-autobiography","category-books","category-history","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-michigan","tag-shonda-buchanan","tag-wayne-state-university-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58723"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58929,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58723\/revisions\/58929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}