Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives (Singular Lives)

A candid, poetic account of childhood and young manhood through the eyes of a Native American, this vivid narrative is destined to become a central moral text for our time. Through the persona of Edgar BearchildOCoa member of the Black Eagle Child SettlementOCoRay A. Young Bear takes readers on an unforgettable OC journey of wordsOCO as he documents grief and anguish countered by an abundance of humor, pride, and insight."
This wonderful volume of stories, told in both prose and poetry, floats between memoir and fiction, history and storytelling. To tell his story, Young Bear creates a fictional counterpart to Iowa's Mesquakie Settlement, where he is an enrolled, lifelong resident, and the fictional persona of Edgar Bearchild. Bearchild's account of childhood to young manhood, from the Fifties through the Seventies, mixes the common history of drugs, Vietnam, and The Doors with the racism and injustice of Native American experience. Interwoven through this personal story are tales told by other speakers, sometimes elegiac, often comic. Effectively the book is as much an autobiography of a community as it is the history of a singular life. This is recommended for most collections.