McCall Library Lets Talk About It

This year’s theme: Through Indigenous Story: An Invitation to Understanding
 This theme focuses on literature by indigenous authors and celebrates storytelling as a powerful tool for learning and understanding. By engaging with indigenous narratives, participants in LTAI can confront biases, deepen their appreciation for cultural resilience, and contribute to the ongoing struggle for Native sovereignty and equity. This theme aims to foster a sense of shared identity and humanity, encouraging dialogue and reflection on the richness of indigenous cultures and their enduring significance. By engaging with this theme, program participants should:

Explore storytelling as a powerful tool for reclaiming, remembering, and healing.

Engage with stories to discover narratives that differ from their own.

Learn about the experiences, challenges, tragedies, and triumphs of Indigenous peoples.

Deepen their understanding of Indigenous cultures.

Wednesday, January 15^th 6:00pm
The Beadworkers: Stories by Beth Piatote
Published 2020, 208 pages

Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world Told with humor, subtlety, and beautiful spareness, the mixed-genre works of Beth Piatote's first collection find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return. A woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings, while ruminating on a fractured relationship. An eleven-year-old girl narrates the unfolding of the Fish Wars in the 1960s, as her family is gradually drawn to the front lines of the conflict. In 1890, as tensions escalate at Wounded Knee, two young men at college, one French and the other Lakota, each contemplate a death in the family. In the final, haunting piece, a Nez Perce/Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a moving revision of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Formally inventive, witty, and generous, the works in this singular debut collection draw on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life in the Americas.

Scholar: Janis Johnson

Janis (Jan) Johnson teaches ethnic American literature and film courses at the University of Idaho and directs the Black Studies Program there. She also works with a non-profit group in Lewiston raising money to renovate and reopen a historic movie theater on Main Street as an arts & culture center. In her spare time, she loves swimming in the Snake River and walking with her dogs.

Wednesday, February 12^th 6:00pm
 The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History by Darren Parry.
 Published 2019, 148 pages.

Even though the Bear River Massacre was a defining event in the history of the Northwest Band of the Shoshone, in Parry’s retelling the massacre did not trap his people in death but offered them rebirth. While never flinching from the realities of Latter-day Saint encroachment on Shoshone land and the racial ramifications of America’s spread westward, Parry offers messages of hope. As storyteller for his people, Parry brings the full weight of Shoshone wisdom to his tales—lessons of peace in the face of violence, of strength in the teeth of annihilation, of survival through change, and of the pliability necessary for cultural endurance. These are arresting stories told disarmingly well. What emerges from the margins of these stories is much more than a history of a massacre from the Shoshone perspective, it is a poignant meditation on the resilience of the soul of a people.--W. Paul Reeve, author of Religion of a Different Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness.

Scholar: Cheryl Oestreicher 

Cheryl Oestreicher, an associate professor and head of special collections and archives for Albertsons Library, recently authored the book Reference and Access for Archives and Manuscripts, which is volume four of the Archival Fundamentals Series III.

Wednesday, March 12^th 6:00pm
 Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley.
 Published 2021, 496 pages.  

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in—both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When her family is struck by tragedy, Daunis puts her dreams on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother’s hockey team. After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. How far will she go to protect her community if it means tearing apart the only world she’s ever known?
Scholar: Elizabeth Sloan

Elizabeth Sloan lives in Moscow, Idaho where she focuses on writing and mixed media. She leads workshops with Blue Sage Writing out of Longmont, CO., as well as giving and receiving prompts and word play through a blend of other virtual venues. Her historical nonfiction, When Songbirds Returned to Paris (Fawkes Press), is set in the European theatre of WWII. Her current work is a collection of essays and stories that might be true, as well as an upcoming revived and revised anthology on breastfeeding titled The Dairy Bar is Always Open. She has essays in Idaho Magazine, High Desert Journal, and drawings published in a number of literary journals over the years. You can follow her author page (E.M. Sloan) at facebook.com/lizziebzArt.