Synopses & Reviews
In this sixth collection of stories and verse, award-winning writer Luci Tapahonso finds sacredness in everyday life. Viewing a sunset in a desert sky, listening to her granddaughter recount how she spent her day, or visiting her mother after her father's passing, she finds traces of her own memories, along with echoes of the voices of her Navajo ancestors. The collection also includes an audio CD of the author reading aloud and her voice is warm and inviting, like the “simmering soup and blue corn meal” of her childhood.
These engaging words draw us into a workaday world that, magically but never surprisingly, has room for the Diyin Dineé (the Holy People), Old Salt Woman, and Dawn Boy. When she describes her grandsons First Laugh Ceremony—explaining that it was originally performed for White Shell Girl, who grew up to be Changing Woman—her account enriches us and we long to hear more. Tapahonso weaves the Navajo language into her work like she weaves “the first four rows of black yarn” into a rug she is making “for my little grandson, who inherited my fathers name: Hastiin Tsétah Naaki Bísóí.”
As readers, we find that we too are surrounded by silent comfort, held lovingly in the confident hands of an accomplished writer who has a great deal to tell us about life.
Review
"Tapahonsos newest poetry collection, A Radiant Curve, confirms her place near the top of any list in American literature." —Studies in American Indian Literatures"Tapahonso celebrates the everyday acts, rituals, and stories that draw people together across the years and across the distances of cultural dispersion." —Library Journal
About the Author
Luci Tapahonso is the author of many books, including Blue Horses Rush In and Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing. She is Professor of American Indian Studies and English at the University of Arizona and in 2006 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.