{"product_id":"songs-blood-deep-paperback","title":"Songs, Blood Deep - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eGwen Nell Westerman\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e*FINALIST, 2024 Minnesota Book Awards\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"The poems are quiet and powerful, understated and deeply moving.\"--Carter Revard, author of \u003ci\u003eHow the Songs Come Down: New \u0026amp; Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat flows deep from the heart songs of\u003cbr\u003ethese poems is Gwen Westerman's proud and profound engagement with and\u003cbr\u003etransmission of closely held cultural values of the Dakota people.\u003cbr\u003eOriginating from the prairies of the Great Plains, this is a\u003cbr\u003ecollection that affirms a passion for family, community, and the\u003cbr\u003eenvironment. Westerman draws upon both English and the Dakota\u003cbr\u003elanguage to celebrate the survival of her people and articulate the\u003cbr\u003econflicts of the past and present, so that an enriched future will\u003cbr\u003eendure. The long opening poem reclaims the Mississippi River as a sacred resource, \"In the beginning\/\u003ci\u003ede Dakota Makoce\/\u003c\/i\u003ethis was a Dakota place.\/The water was pure.\" Historical\u003cbr\u003emisinformation about the First Peoples is unmasked, the record set\u003cbr\u003estraight apart from how explorers and conquering armies have wrongly\u003cbr\u003eportrayed the past. Herein life-affirming words are\u003cbr\u003econveyed from grandmother, to mother, to children and offered as a\u003cbr\u003egift to the reader, \"This is my give-away--to touch what is good in you\/with words your heart can hear.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eGwen Nell Westerman is a poet, a visual artist, and a scholar. Her roots are deep in the landscape of the tallgrass prairie and reveal themselves in her art and writing. A member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, she lives in southern Minnesota, as did her father's Dakota people. Her mother's family is from the Flint District of the Cherokee Nation, and Gwen is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Neither of her parents spoke English when they were sent to boarding schools as small children, so she knows the important way language shapes who we are. She was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Minnesota in 2021.\u003c\/p\u003eHer poetry is included in\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eNative Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories\u003c\/i\u003e at the Field Museum in Chicago, and has appeared recently in \u003ci\u003eYellow Medicine Review \u003c\/i\u003e(Fall 2022); \u003ci\u003eWhen the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry \u003c\/i\u003e(2020); \u003ci\u003ePOETRY \u003c\/i\u003eMagazine (2019); and \u003ci\u003eNew Poets of Native Nations: 21 Poets of the 21st Century\u003c\/i\u003e (2018).\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHer award-winning visual art is included in \u003ci\u003eQuiltfolk Issue 13--Minnesota\u003c\/i\u003e (2019) and \u003ci\u003eSewing \u0026amp; Survival: Native American Quilts from 1880-2022\u003c\/i\u003e by Teresa Duryea Wong. Her quilts are in the permanent collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Great Plains Art Museum, The Heritage Center of the Red Cloud Indian School, and The University Art Galleries at the University of South Dakota. \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 82\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.4 x 8.8 x 5.8 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 03, 2023\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51764961214752,"sku":"9781737405146","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/9ee13d7d19cfaf5e47d458fa6a3dfb01.webp?v=1780258871","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/songs-blood-deep-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}