While the Locust Slept

By Peter Razor,

Book cover of While the Locust Slept: A Memoir

Book description

Through transcendent prose, an Ojibwe man chronicles his survival of abuse and bigotry at a state orphanage in the 1930s and the brutal farm indenture that followed.

In stark, haunting prose, first-time author Peter Razor recalls his early years as a ward of the State of Minnesota. Disclosing his story…

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Why read it?

1 author picked While the Locust Slept as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In college I majored in American Indian Studies and became very familiar with the term “survivance”. First used by Anishinaabeg writer Gerald Vizenor, survivance, defined is survival that transcends victimhood, that resists generations of oppression, and carves meaning out of great pain.

Peter Razor embodies survivance in his autobiography, which recounts his childhood as a ward of the State of Minnesota in the 1930s. His story is one of many that shines a light on a dark period when many Native American children were taken from their homes and families, forced to uproot their identity and existence to the unforgiving…

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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