A01=Leah Myers
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
ancestry
Author_Leah Myers
automatic-update
bear
blood quantum
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BGA
Category=BM
Category=DNBA
Category=DNC
Category=DNF
Category=DNL
Category=DNT
Category=DQ
Category=JBSL11
Category=JFSL9
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
folklore
heritage
history
hummingbird
indigenous
jamestown sklallam
Language_English
native american
PA=Available
pacific northwest
pnw
pocahontas
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
raven
salmon
softlaunch
totem
tribal
tribe
Product details
- ISBN 9781324076278
- Weight: 180g
- Dimensions: 140 x 211mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jul 2024
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe’s strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family’s totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird and perched on top, Raven.
As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her “culture is being bleached out”, offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds: her naïve childhood love for Pocahontas, her struggles with the Klallam language, the violence she faced at the hands of a close White friend as a teenager.
Crisp and powerful, Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of one woman’s identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family and what it means to belong.
Leah Myers received an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of New Orleans, where she won the Mockbee Award for Nonfiction two years in a row. She now lives in Alabama, with roots in Georgia, Arizona, and Washington.
