Thunder Song Essays

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Thunder Song is a new collection of essays about LaPointe’s experience living on Coast Salish land, her identity as a queer Indigenous person, navigating the punk scene, and intergenerational connection. The writing is just as vibrant and stunning as the cover! Recommended By Vicky K., Powells.com

The author of the award-winning memoir Red Paint returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States today

Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art — in particular music — and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

"Lyrical prose elevates LaPointe's incisive and heartfelt personal reflections. The result is a beautifully rendered snapshot of contemporary American Indigenous life." Publishers Weekly

"These passionate essays, adamant in their activist pleas, reflect hard-won wisdom, as well as the representative significance of the author's experiences. Probing and poignant reflections on Indigenous America." Kirkus Reviews

"Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe's essays in Thunder Song are loud, bold, and startlingly majestic. None of Sasha's examinations fail to find truth: page after page, the intersections of family, heritage, history, and music build to countless transcendental moments for the reader, which is not only the magic of this book but a clear testament to Sasha's immense storytelling power. She is a major talent. Thunder Song is masterful and wise, and it will not be forgotten." Morgan Talty, National Bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

"Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe's essays are the songs that twine us together, the stories that teach us how to live, and the directions through the deep forest where our medicines grow. For everyone who keeps singing and telling and listening, Thunder Song is a heart-balm and a gift." Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

"Thunder Song is testimony, prayer, song. It is an announcement — that a Two-Spirit woman has stepped into her power. It is living proof that loving oneself can be a radical act of decolonization. It is at once a protest against Indigenous erasure and a powerful reminder that Indigenous peoples have part of the answer to the burning question of how to get out of the horrible, planetary mess that we're in. But more than all this, Thunder Song is the literary equivalent of plant medicine. In it, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe gathers the stories and sacred herbs of her lived experiences (and her people's) and makes a medicine of her own — to heal herself and, in turn, everyone else. An offering of rare beauty in this broken world." Julian Aguon author of No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies and founder of Blue Ocean Law

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe is a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes. She is the author of Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award, the Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir, and an NPR Best Book of the Year, and the poetry collection Rose Quartz. She received a double MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Tacoma, Washington.