Savage Conversations

LeAnne Howe's words are to savor, contemplate, and horrify. Savage Conversations explodes with the stench of guilt and insanity that undergirds the American story, whispered through a personal, familial, national, and supernatural drama revelatory in every sense. Howe's uncanny images will long haunt readers, just as the Dakota 38 linger in land and memory, both offering a testament to the violent entanglements of past and present. --Philip J. Deloria This is a haunted poem. Howe gives us voices intimate, twisted, and deluded--and yet relentlessly exact. Inside this drama in verse, a seething history uncoils. But do we meet a mad woman's fantasy or someone more real? --Heid Erdrich I am stunned by the beauty, humor, and originality of this book. It feels as new as the Garden of Eden, except Adam is really the Holy Trinity of the Three Stooges, and Eve is a genius Native woman poet-professor. For years, I've hoped that we Native writers will build a twenty-first century literary rocket and blast off into brand new space. LeAnne Howe (along with Adam, Eve, the Three Stooges, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Crazy Horse and Custer, and the entire cast of Gilligan's Island, along with Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and five or six smiling Indian elders) has done exactly that. This book is new. --Sherman Alexie LeAnne Howe's Evidence of Red is a complex and exhilarating symphony, with passages of mythic sweep, swatches of history, and poignant memoir--held together with her inimitable take-no-prisoners comic sense. --Ken McCullough How does she do it? Cross Rocky Horror Picture Show with War and Peace in a voice that sings America's song as deeply as the best musical poetry of Walt Whitman? But no, Howe's voice is so utterly unique, comparisons can't do her justice. Evidence of Red succeeds on every level: emotional, intellectual, spiritual, sensual, political. This volume is a gift from a rich place--wise, generous, exciting, and completely fresh. --Susan Power LeAnne Howe's Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose cracks open the strictures of literature with passion, enthusiasm, verve, and style! And I mean it is truly coming into being Choctaw style and beyond! You haven't read Howe yet until you experience her ranging in Evidence of Red from oral story style, poetic verse, fiction, dramatic script, even a bit of a musical, take your pick. And then let her lead you into history, intrigue, comedy and comic insight, even mystery, yes, as she impels you and other readers toward decolonization with attitude! A very fine and fulfilling read. --Simon J. Ortiz