No Parole Today (Hardcover)

Poetry and Memoir. In her first collection of poetry and prose memoir, Dine (Navajo) writer Laura Tohe describes her childhood on the reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, the joys and sorrows of boarding school life, and growing up to a wiser maturity, still capable of radiating things of beauty despite the memory of brutality and loss. When the moon died/ she reminded us of/ the earth ripping apart/ violent tremors,/ greasy oceans,/ the panic of steel winds,/ whipping shorelines and/ thirsty fields. I know of no other book that deals more directly with the Indian School experience or does it better. Tohe mourns the losses, yet never loses herself in bitterness ... this (is) a minor classic that should be in every library -- Joseph Bruchac.