wiglaf - reviewed on 4/21/2012 + 16 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I loved this book until I found out that it was a work of fiction that misrepresented Cherokees under the guise of being an legitimate autobiography. If you want to read books by real Native Americans, don't read this. Instead you might read some Sherman Alexie or Leslie Marmon Silko. It is actually the work of a KKK member and segregationist Asa Carter who had previously written some of defiant segregationist Governor George Wallace's most famous speeches only to turn on him for being too accommodating to desegregation and running against him. Had he only written a work of fiction and labelled it as such it could stand or fall on its own merits. But Carter's appropriation of an "Indian" identity for his own purposes as an author is an act of cultural vandalism. See http://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151037079/the-artful-reinvention-of-klansman-asa-earl-carter or http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/03/going_native.html for more information on his history and actions.

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