Thunder Song

January 22, 2024
In this affecting collection, Coast Salish poet LaPointe (Red Paint) explores how she has navigated colonized spaces as a light-skinned Indigenous woman, and the strength she draws from ancestral knowledge. In “Tulips,” LaPointe laments how she felt compelled to hide her Native American heritage from white classmates in grade school and likens her ruse to how white settlers drained the waterways on which her Skagit Valley ancestors depended: “I changed the landscape of my own identity the same way settlers changed the land they took from us.” LaPointe suggests in “Reservation Riot Grrrl” that though making punk music offers her an outlet for her rage, the scene often assumes whiteness as the norm, as exemplified by an incident in which two white women attempted to get LaPointe’s gig canceled after spotting her wearing face paint and, assuming she was white, accusing her of cultural appropriation. The poignant “First Salmon Ceremony” recounts how LaPointe followed the example set by her white punk friends and became a vegan, only for them to judge her for longing for salmon, a fish with profound cultural significance in Coast Salish tribes: “I grieved for the girl who fell in love with anarchists and tethered herself to their values, for the silence she let herself learn.” Lyrical prose elevates LaPointe’s incisive and heartfelt personal reflections. The result is a beautifully rendered snapshot of contemporary American Indigenous life.

May 10, 2024

Coast Salish author LaPointe offers a follow-up to her award-winning autobiography, Red Paint, which explored the intersections between Indigenous resilience and Pacific Northwest punk. In this collection of 16 essays organized into five "Orations," LaPointe reiterates the importance of music and storytelling to Indigenous heritage and healing, arguing that it is medicine for fighting erasure and disrupting cycles of generational harm. Interweaving various formative experiences as a light-skinned queer Indigenous woman--her childhood growing up on a Washington reservation, her young adulthood in Seattle and its white male-dominated punk scene, her divorce and subsequent search for healthy love--LaPointe describes how women's and ancestral voices can guide one through sorrow and strife. It is a powerful thesis that arguably succeeds better across the larger sequence of Orations than within any of LaPointe's individual essays, which occasionally force endings too neatly to feel fully resonant. Still, the collection's core strength is LaPointe herself, who narrates each story with conviction and generous vulnerability--an added benefit in audio. VERDICT A captivating collection of essays highlighting LaPointe's unique experiences and inheritances as a modern Coast Salish woman. Strongly recommended for fans of Red Paint and similar memoirs; essential for Pacific Northwest library collections.--Robin Chin Roemer

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