Little Big Bully

Starred review from October 1, 2020
In Erdrich's fully alive poems, the speakers refuse to turn away from cruel truths, instead actively investigating and resisting attempts to disguise or hide them. As a Native American, as a woman, Erdrich knows how oppressors operate, preying on the seemingly weak or quiet ones, shouting louder and pushing hardest. She tackles different forms of bullying in these timely poems by interweaving the personal, public, and cultural. Zeno's Indians is particularly prescient in light of George Floyd's brutal murder when it states, Minnesotans can be oppressively polite (Minnesota Nice) and racially despairing. Erdrich's experiments with language and repetition often produce chant- and rap-like rhythms that evoke rapid and repeated gunfire. Erdrich sees through false promises and gestures, writing inside every handshake is a fist. Our current political and social landscape has reawakened cultural and racial traumas as well as memories of personal violation and abuse. This fierce truth-speaker will not stand down or stay silent. Erdrich is willing to reopen every wound with purpose, to shine a bright light into the darkest corner. She recreates real and painful scenes to make us bear witness, as if viewing body-camera video that does not lie.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2020

Whatever she is addressing, Erdrich (Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media), a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, exhibits a terrible urgency that carries readers along with her. Poems expressing intense love and desire ("Loves How I love you How you How we hang on words How eaten with need") are counterbalanced by those decrying the way women are used and abused. "All Nations," which begins with the near ungraspable fact of animal extinction ("I would like to think they've gone off somewhere"), flows into reflections on the genocide of Indigenous peoples ("Extinction sounds like other worlds other words extermination Termination"). Even as she embraces her heritage ("We are the children of creation/ under some protection/ ...our rights equal eagle's"), she challenges "fauxskins" who wrongly claim it; "they want in us--inside us/ want to dress in our dead" without understanding the terrible price her people have paid. VERDICT A "National Poetry" selection, this work offers propulsive, open-hearted poems and would be a fine addition to most collections.

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