The Women’s Warrior Society is a remarkable gathering of characters and voices used to expose truths about Native American life. In tightly woven prose, Lois Beardslee tells stories about people from
Hard to describe in a few words is this thought-provoking, moving, and confrontational collection of stories by Beardslee, an Ojibwa-Lacandon artist, author, and teacher. In a simultaneously lyrical and brutally honest style, she elucidates the Native truths kept alive by the Women’s Warrior Society. These powerfully imagined 'women with attitude [and] women with histories of malcontent . . . who sing like wolves' prod us to amend our own actions; their ringing words are meant to be savored, then shared.
—Booklist
These [women warriors]—despite the best intentions of the dominant society—are not going away. And someone really ought to give Lois Beardslee that Pulitzer.
—Multicultural Review
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all over North America and from either side of the line between abused and abuser. Both individual and archetypal, Native and non-Native, male and female, her characters take up arms against widely
accepted stereotypes about Native people. The women warriors in these tales have lived through a variety of mishaps, experiencing the consequences brought on by misinformation and the misguided
efforts of institutions and individuals. Armed with this experience, they gather in unlikely “sweatlodges”—from kitchen tables to public libraries—transforming into she-wolves who, lips curled, snarl
at their own victimization and assert that hope for future generations is maintained through creativity, determination, and the preservation of traditional values. This is political writing at its
most honest and creative. Beardslee’s style is poetic and lyrical, and her voice, shifting as it does, both grips us with terrible tone and comforts us with familiar assurance. A fierce call to
action, this book reads like a song cycle—both singing to us and demanding that we sing in response. Beardslee creates new strategies and measures of success. Her warriors dance, bark, howl, and
transform themselves in unexpected ways that invoke tears, laughter, even awe. They are, above all, driven, successful, and eternally hopeful.
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