{"id":64278,"date":"2023-06-09T17:24:24","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T17:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64278"},"modified":"2023-06-09T17:28:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T17:28:09","slug":"birding-while-indian-a-mixed-blood-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64278","title":{"rendered":"Birding While Indian, A Mixed-Blood Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birding While Indian, A Mixed-Blood Memoir<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Mad Creek Books<\/a> (an imprint Ohio State University Press<\/a>)
\nJune 2023
\n246 pages
\n5.5 x 8.5 inches
\n6 Illustrations
\nPaperback ISBN: 978-0-8142-5872-9
\neBook (PDF): ISBN: 978-0-8142-8289-2<\/p>\n

Thomas C. Gannon<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
\nUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Thomas C. Gannon\u2019s Birding While Indian<\/em> spans more than fifty years of childhood walks and adult road trips to deliver, via a compendium of birds recorded and revered, the author\u2019s life as a part-Lakota<\/a> inhabitant of the Great Plains<\/a>. Great Horned Owl<\/a>, Sandhill Crane<\/a>, Dickcissel<\/a>: such species form a kind of rosary, a corrective to the rosaries that evoke Gannon\u2019s traumatic time in an Indian boarding school<\/a> in South Dakota<\/a>, his mother\u2019s tears when coworkers called her \u201csquaw<\/a>,\u201d and the violent erasure colonialism demanded of the Indigenous humans, animals, and land of the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Birding<\/a> has always been Gannon\u2019s escape and solace. He later found similar solace in literature, particularly by Native authors. He draws on both throughout this expansive, hilarious, and humane memoir. An acerbic observer\u2014of birds, of the aftershocks of history, and of human nature\u2014Gannon navigates his obsession with the ostensibly objective avocation of birding and his own mixed-blood subjectivity, searching for that elusive Snowy Owl<\/a> and his own identity. The result is a rich reflection not only on one man\u2019s life but on the transformative power of building a deeper relationship with the natural world.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n