Description
Rising Voices: Writing of Young Native Americans is a collection of poems and short essays written by 63 Native American students from grade 3 to senior high school. The collected works were selected from previously published anthologies, student publications, and newsletters. The editors have organized the pieces into several themes including Identity, Family, Homelands, Ritual and Ceremony, Education, and Harsh Realities. Each selection is clearly identified with the student's name, their tribal affiliation, and grade level. Many of the pieces were written during the 1960s and 1970s but the earliest appeared in 1887 and the latest in 1990. The oldest piece of writing is a letter (1887) from seventeen year old Frank Keokuk, a Sac and Fox, who attended Hampton Institute in Virginia. This boarding school for Indian students had a militaristic bent and the young man writes about military drills, working two days on the school farm, and attending school four days a week. Other entries in the education section of the book also reflect the residential school or boarding school experience of many Native American youth. The editors have provided brief introductions for each theme section and have included definitions or explanations of terms or people the students mention in their work that may be unfamiliar to the general reader. The collection reflects an equal number of male and female students and often reveals a sensitive side of young male students. All students were encouraged to write during their classroom experience. Often students worked with a writer-in-residence and submitted their work for a competition. On the whole this selection is a valuable resource for students in grades five to high school. Non-Native students can read about different points of view about American history and hear about feelings that may reflect their own. This valuable resource should be available in all school libraries.