Our next Book Club meeting is Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 6:30 pm Central.
Contact Liz to Register and she will send you a Zoom link the week of the meeting.
Hello, Listening to America Book Club Members!
Time for the next Book Club meeting. We’ve looked at Lewis and Clark day by day, and we’ve explored the life and achievement of Edward S. Curtis. I want to talk a little more about Curtis when we meet, particularly because I just lectured about the achievement of Curtis at the James Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The main focus of this session will be James Welch’s outstanding novel Fools Crow. Welch (1940-2003) grew up in Blackfeet and A’aninin cultures in northwestern Montana. He wrote a number of excellent novels: Winter in the Blood, The Heartsong of Charging Elk, and Fools Crow. He also published a fascinating treatment of the Custer myth in American culture: Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians.
Fools Crow is one of my favorite works of American literature. As you know, it’s the story of the clash of two cultures: the Anglo-American exemplars of “Manifest Destiny” and the resistance of the Blackfeet as they attempted to survive the white onslaught of the post Civil War period. How does an indigenous culture make sense of a more powerful (and more industrial) social system? What elements of non-Native culture can be adopted successfully, and what elements so severely destabilize the indigenous community as to threaten its survival? Fools Crow is a tragedy, but I believe it is one of the best windows we have into the Native American world in this time of enormous change and challenge.
Come ready to talk! To raise questions, to point to confusing passages, fabulous passages, troubling passages. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.
See you soon!
