The most recommended Navajo books

While several other books describe uranium’s effects on the Navajos and other Native American peoples from individual effects of exposure and death, Wastelanding is strongest in building a strong case that all of these individual efforts constitute a clear case that environmental racism, as well as colonization, and gender discrimination, combine with the United States’ hunger for uranium in a new atomic age to make victims of people who had lived in the areas for millennia while leaving the uranium in the ground, which is exactly where the people decided it should stay.

Hatter Fox is one of those rare stories which causes me to lose my sense of self.

There is no who am I, how am I, or why am I, none of that matters, all that matters is the story. This story is so real, and shows so accurately what can happen to young minds when they are raised in an oppressive, prejudiced environment.

Hatter Fox also exemplifies the true power of fiction, in that it allows us to shed a tear. We steel ourselves against the harsh realities of life, and do not weep for the downtrodden, but for fictional characters, we are free to feel our sorrows.

This is one of Hillerman’s best mysteries.

His writing is as crisp and startling as the turquoise skies over the New Mexico desert. Laconic Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn quickly felt like a familiar friend.

The story haunted me, especially the scary scene at the Shalako ceremonial in a Zuni village.

Pasternak was one of several journalists who became immersed in the cause of assembling information on exposure of Navajos and other Native American peoples to lethal doses of uranium as a result of mining.

As a veteran who worked with the Los Angeles Times for 24 years, she played an important role in achieving compensation. Yellow Dirt is especially strong on ways in which uranium had pervaded the lives of the Navajo, from the clothes they wore to the food they ate, to the air they breathed.

Thankfully, not all Indian stories are written or recounted by men. Irene Stewart, born at the base of Canyon de Chelly in 1907, grew up in the shadow of her father, a medicine man who had her kidnapped and taken against her will to boarding school. She survived three of those schools, including Haskell Institute, where she learned to bob her hair, studied home economics, and later became a Presbyterian. But this is no simple tale of assimilation. Like many of her schoolmates, she remained attached to tribal ways and remained true to Navajo tradition even while transforming herself for the world beyond the rez. 

I read this book after a long, dull period when I couldn’t seem to find anything to read that sparked my interest. Trail of Lightning picked me up, whirled me around, and made me fall head-over-heels in love with speculative fiction again.

Set in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world, it’s brutal and gripping, but where there should only be sadness and despair, there are unexpected moments of un-looked-for kindness. This isn’t a light read, and it isn’t exactly happy—but there’s a beautiful optimism underlying the bleakness, that after all, even in the worst of circumstances and at the worst of times, people can be kind. 

Wars take a long time to end. Work is done to bury the loss, grief, and guilt described above as quickly as possible. Oftentimes the forces that stand to profit from this forgetting succeed, except among those groups which are either ignored or for whom the loss is too deep. What Layli Long Soldier’s brilliant Whereas discloses is how the acts of government, the papers generated like planks over a well, seek to hide that grief and loss, and how those groups might reclaim the stories those papers hope to disappear. 

R. Allen Chappell’s novel resonates with me from the reality of his depiction of life among the Navajo, reflecting his personal familiarity with the people. His protagonists portray diverse, very human characters with all their inherent weaknesses and strengths, tested by the hard life on the Rez. In Magpie Speaks, Charlie Yazzie’s unflappably grounded outlook balances Paul T’Sosi ’s immersive belief in the old ways, a traditional way of thinking that permits the existence of witches who can cause him harm with their supernatural powers. His depiction of Harley Ponyboy, a sometime drunk (“just because I’m drinking now doesn’t make me a drunk”) is both sympathetic and alarming to me. Chappell’s characters are real.

Another unlikely heroine, but only because she sees ghosts—okay, okay, maybe also because seeing ghosts or even talking about them is strictly forbidden in Rita Todacheene’s Navajo culture.

I loved this book so, so much for both its detail and its unusual premise. Todacheene’s ghosts haunt her and play an active part in her investigations as a forensic photographer. And, since the author was a forensic photographer herself, the work rings true and sharp. Ghosts aside, she also has to contend with her own culture, a struggle with which I’m intimately familiar.  

I also loved the way that Emerson structured this book—Todacheene’s beloved cameras, acting as framing devices, guide us through her timeline, and she keeps on learning things about herself even as we go from the most advanced camera to the oldest possible film-based option. I can’t wait to read the second in this series to see what our… show more.

Dineh took me inside the experience of a young girl growing up in the “Fiddler on the Roof” world at the turn of the 20th Century.

Like James Joyce’s Dubliners, it begins in the mindset of a very young child whose world gradually opens up and opens out as she grows up. The book is chock-full of everyday life -- details about household tasks, farm animals, and country landscapes --  and also teeming with family drama and the pressures of the larger world.

My favorite scene is reflected on the book’s cover. A tree growing beside the girl’s bedroom is so close that in summer, the branches grow right into the room, bringing the natural world right into her dreams.