Survival Against a World of Cultural Contradictions
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This is Mary Crow Dog's story, told in her own "uneducated" words. It is a tale of struggle and survival on the outer edges of "conquered Native Land," in the Northern tier of the continent of North America, now referred to as the US of A. It is not only a story about the struggles, defeats and eventual triumphs over Northern white racism and sexism, but also one about the struggle against Native America's own sexism and cultural chauvinism against Native American women.
What is most poignant about Ms. Crow Dog's story is the utter universality of the twin human plagues of racism and sexism and how they can trap and alter the course of not just one life but generations of families of women. By simply changing the names, the shade of darkness, and the region of the country, this could be the story of any "poor woman of color" in the USA.
For a "still recovering male chauvinist pig," this is heady medicine.
As she tells it, for at least three generations (or as far back as she could remember), children of her South Dakota family were taken off their squalid Reservations at an early age, "to be trained and educated" by white Catholic Missionaries, who by all accounts (hers as well as from others along the family tree), provided, in addition to their stern teaching of worthless religious dogma, also meted out an unhealthy dose of contradictions that consisted of sadistic and regular beatings, racism, child sex rape, sexual perversions, and numerous aborted babies of nuns discover accidentally in the schools clogged sewer drains.
Unlike her foremothers, who chose the path of "being willingly socially adjusted" into alien white ways, Ms. Crow Dog chose the course of rebellion, and of course for this she expectedly ran into "heavy weather" where the normal price was extracted. Before all was said and done, she was either forced, or chose, to do it all: drinking, drugs, fights, rapes, prostitution, riots and jailed, until she too finally managed to pull the chaos called her life together to marry a descent man and raise a family. Her payoff for all of her rebellion might be considered meager by some but for her it was enough. It was "peace of mind" for the first time in her life, and a final recalibrating of the family life story.
As she described it, there was not just a "generation gap," between her and her parents, but a "a generation Grand Canyon. " Her mother in particular failed to understand the imperatives driving this wayward daughter. But Ms. Crow Dog's struggles made her a much stronger individual, than meekly going along with her Catholic teachings had made her mother. Arguably it was her rebellion that broke a rather "hopeless" cycle of cultural submission and made her strong enough to confront the worse instincts in the land stolen from her forefathers and foremothers.
Five stars.
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