THE GRASS DANCER by Susan Power (2024)

“Medicine pulsed within me, shot through my veins, and I don't mean the kind a doctor pumps into the body. I didn't practice good medicine or bad medicine, or a weak magic summoned by poems; I simply had potent blood inherited from my grandmother's sister, Red Dress. And there were times when it pained me like a fire, or froze me like a rock, and any weaker person would have crawled toward death.”

TITLE—The Grass Dancer

AUTHOR—Susan Power

PUBLISHED—1994

PUBLISHER—GP Putnam’s Sons

GENRE—literary Indigenous historical fiction

SETTING—Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) lands colonized as North & South Dakota

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Indigenous worldview, landscape, & cosmology, Sioux, Dakota, Menominee rep, culture, & history, intergenerational memory & stories, Yupiwi medicine, traditional grass dancing & other dances, intimacy & knowing, finding one’s way & the old ways again, ancestors, elders, tragedy & grief, reservation life, dreams & visions, the conflict bw strength of spirit & weakness of will, oppression & repression, ghosts, healing, forgiveness, & redemption, soldiers & warriors, Fear & Faith, Spirit justice, empathy, pity, & compassion, finding what is lost

“I prefer to watch the present unravel moment by moment than to look close behind me or far ahead. Time extends from me, flowing in many directions, meeting the horizon and then moving beyond to follow the curve of the earth. But I will not track its course with my eyes. It is too painful. I can bear witness to only a single moment of loss at a time. Still, hope flutters in my heart, a delicate pulse. I straddle the world and pray to Wakan Tanka that somewhere ahead of me He has planted an instant of joy.”

Summary:

A collection of intertwining stories reaching back through 100 years worth of generations of two family lines incorporating elements of Sioux & some european settler ancestry.

My thoughts:

I had sort of resigned myself to not reading this one with the group (Indigenous Reading Circle bookclub on IG) in May because I already had a packed tbr for the month & was having trouble finding a copy. Then I serendipitously stumbled across a copy of it at a library booksale I was browsing about a week into the month so I took it as a sign that no actually I do need to read this book right now so I did. 😆

And yes I did need this book right now. This book was the perfect follow-up read to Debra Magpie Earling’s PERMA RED & Linda Hogan’s SOLAR STORMS, as well as a really beautiful segue into Violet Kupersmith’s BUILD YOUR HOUSE AROUND MY BODY & NS Nuseibeh’s NAMESAKE (which I read right after).

First & most of all I absolutely loved the structure of the books & how the stories were sort of told circularly starting with the “present” & then working backwards to Red Dress’s & Ghost Horse’s stories & then coming back again to continue Charlene’s & Harley’s stories. Seeing all the different character arcs sort of go in reverse & then come back to complete their circles was really powerful. In this way the ending isn’t really an ending but a beginning which is also a really cool representation of Indigenous conceptions of time & history.

I thought it was really interesting how Power explored the way that western ideologies (i.e. ideas about chastity, purity, sin, etc.) served to isolate individuals from their culture, their communities, & themselves as a form of internalized imperialism (something Nuseibeh talks about in NAMESAKE).

I also appreciated Jeannette’s character arc—how she never stopped being an insufferable white woman but that she was also a complex & by the end at least somewhat sympathetic character even if she never truly lost her cringe. Especially with her baby & what Herod said about the child needing to be told “two stories.” That felt really special to me.

I loved Harley’s story that he told to Jeannette in class. Moonwalk was my favorite chapter. My heart absolutely shattered for Lydia. And Anna Thunder—I was so heart broken to see how she got so eaten up with her anger. I of course loved all the fairy tale elements, references, & vibes. And Red Dress & Spotted Dog were my favorite characters.

“Margaret had recovered an old faith from her youth, from the days when there was magic, before the concept of sin had washed over Dakota people, just as the Oahe Dam had flooded their reservation with stagnant water.
“I have been defeated by guilt, Margaret had decided. And that is when she had her grandson, Harley Wind Soldier, bury her cedar rosary in the dirt yard. ‘Maybe something useful will grow,’ she told him. She took to praying to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of her childhood, who had not been a jealous God, she thought, but had waited patiently for her to honor Him again.”

Another fantastic selection by the #IndigenousReadingCircle bookclub. 🫶🏻 I’m definitely going to check out Power’s newer book, A COUNCIL OF DOLLS which the bookclub read last year & was also a favorite of theirs.

I would recommend this book to readers who like epic, saga-like, yet intimately told, literary historical fiction novels about multiple generations of dual families with spiritual & Indigenous realities & themes. This book is best read on audiobook for the correct pronunciation of the Dakota names & terms in the book. Power reads it herself & while she’s not a performer it’s always interesting imo to hear the author read their work themselves.

Final note: I found it helpful to sort of sketch a family tree in the back of the book as I read so I could follow the stories & see the points of connection a bit clearer. But don’t look one up beforehand because it’ll have spoilers!(I also had to do this for Kupersmith’s BUILD YOUR HOUSE which I read right after this one so that’s another funny parallel between those two books… 😆)

“ ‘What about the medicine hole? Will I ever find it?’
“The spirit warriors smiled, and one of them raised his hand, palm outward; it flashed like a mirror. ‘You are the medicine hole,’ he said.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

CW // racism, genocide, death, murder, alcohol, ptsd, abuse

Season: Summer

Music pairing: “Savage Daughter,” by Ekaterina Shelehova

Favorite Quotes—

“‘You can't help who you love, Unči,’ she had protested.

“’Yes you can. You love yourself, you love your family, and you don't let your feelings run around and jump into someone else's hand.’ Mercury had made a fist. ‘You grab on to your own life and push it around where you want it to go.’”

“Mercury believed she held her life firmly in place beneath her tongue, and she didn't spit it out here and there, in bits and pieces, diffusing its power. She had even taken a new name, changing it from Anna to Mercury after her granddaughter brought home a copy of the periodic table in the eighth grade and explained to her: ‘An element is a substance that can't be split into simpler substances.’

“‘That's my story,’ Mercury had told Charlene, running her thick forefinger across the chart. ‘I’m all of a piece.’”

“This goes beyond leaving home and my parents, she had written in the essay required of all applicants. I know I am committed to a college education because I am willing to go to great lengths to earn one. I will have to put aside one worldview—perhaps only temporarily—to take up another. From what I have learned so far, I know the two are not complementary but rather incompatible, and melodramatic as it may sound, I sometimes feel l am risking my soul by leaving the Indian community.”

“…she expressed herself only minimally, with nudges and shrugs, leaving an empty space between herself and her son, a deep cavity Harley had internalized. Harley couldn't remember a time when he didn't feel the black, empty hole squeezed in his chest between heart and lungs. It was solidly lodged there, sharp-cornered like a metal strongbox. When he was little he told himself it was only a matter of years before it filled up, packed with new experiences and sudden insights. When he drew pictures of himself with crayons, Harley always included the empty hole by drawing a black spot on his torso. Adults laughed: ‘You can't draw a belly button on top of clothes. See, your own navel is hidden under your shirt.’ His first-grade teacher had scolded him about it in front of the class, so he stopped drawing the hole, to please her. But he knew it was there. He could see it under the crayon-drawn shirt as if he had X-ray vision that burned through paper.”

“Harley reached inside the medicine cabinet for the makeup paints he would use to prepare his face for the dance. His fingers trembled as he touched the three stubby cylinders: the newer blue and black crayons and the worn chalky white stick. The markings Harley drew were ancient, passed down from father to son or, in his case, from mother to son. Wearing them was like slipping behind an ancestral mask. And as Harley painted, blotting sweat from his forehead and temples with a paper towel, he thought he heard the dead grandfathers' voices scratching the house with hoarse whispers, rasping like static from the radio. We are rising, we are rising, the voices hummed. And when Harley's painted mask was in place, an angry magpie dive-bombed the bathroom window, screeching, We are here, we are here.”

“‘Look over there,’ Frank said. He pointed to a young woman in a grass-dance costume standing at the edge of the arena. It was unusual to see a woman in a man's costume, but the outfit suited her. Yarn fringe was used to represent long grass and fell from the girl's body in red and yellow waves. She was pinning her contest number to the front apron of her costume, smoothing the fringe so the number wouldn't be concealed.

“Frank stared at her for several moments. He couldn't decide why he found her so attractive. She wasn't pretty in a conventional way, but it would be difficult to forget her face.

“‘Have you ever seen a girl grass dancer?’ Frank asked Herod.

“’No, I never did. But I guess it's about time. They have every right.’

“Frank looked at Herod in surprise. His grandfather wasn't known to be very liberal when it came to women.

“‘You have to remember, there's two kinds of grass dancing,’ the old man explained. ‘There's the grass dancer who prepares the field for a powwow the old-time way, turning the grass over with his feet to flatten it down. Then there's the spiritual dancer, who wants to learn grass secrets by imitating it, moving his body with the wind. I guess a woman should be able to choose her own style.’”

“She was the best grass dancer on the field; she became a flexible stem, twisting toward the sky, dipping to the ground, bending with the wind. She was dry and brittle, shattered by drought, and then she was heavy with rain.”

“‘What made you decide to do grass style?’ he asked.

“‘It's a challenge. I tried women's traditional and women's fancy shawl, but I was always myself out there. As a grass dancer, I'm trying to become something else. I step outside of myself. Do you know what I mean?’

“Harley nodded. ‘I think so.’”

“‘I don't mess myself with women, because you can't be sure about them. Sometimes there's a lot of power there, and you have to be careful. But most men I know go down like that.’ Mercury snapped her fingers. ‘You can use the easiest medicine, the oldest tricks. Powders that are so stale you think maybe you should throw them out because the magic's seeped away. I'll teach you to take control.’”

“‘I had important things I was thinking. I had business with the fire.’ Charlene decided this was something she didn't want to hear about, but Mercury continued. ‘You know what occurred to me? There is a devil-man, but there is no devil-woman. I could be a hot queen and blow fire kisses from the palm of my hand. I’d keep that old Devil Jack entertained, and if he turned on me, boy, wouldn't I toast his slippers!’”

“‘Get back with your Jesus!’ Mercury spat. ‘You take him right back where you found him, and don't bring him to me. That one has too many faces. You don't know where you stand with him. Give me honest Jack anytime, because I know he wants to do me in, but I can see him coming a mile away.’”

“‘Those kids. Those four Menominees. Now they're the true kind of grass dancers. Now they really know how to prepare the way.’ Frank looked skeptical, but Harley believed the old man, because the last time he glanced over his shoulder before climbing into the truck, he thought he saw four figures, graceful as waves, dancing the grass into a carpet.”

“He walked against the flow of water, in the direction of its source, soothed by its lush voice.”

“A young man in a bowler hat seated himself at the instrument and pumped the pedals as if to test them. His fingers drifted to the keys, and then the young man teased music from the wood-and-ivory table, his eyes closed and torso rocking: so intent on his performance he didn't notice the dense crowd along the shore and never guessed that he was ushering in a new religion.”

“I’d imagined my grandson in the field, nearly hidden by tall grass, crowing, "Tunkašida"—grandfather—"I can see it! I can see it now!" We would stand at the edge of the medicine hole, all of us young, all of us strong—the earth crying for two old men, dried up and sun-withered, pitying us enough to restore us, in body or in spirit. The earth would provide a soothing ointment to take away the pain I felt with every movement. All this I had anticipated. But now I was distracted, may as well have been a blind man scrabbling through the weeds. I was not in the present but in the past. I couldn't see what was before me, only what was behind.”

“Charles Bad Holy MacLeod returned to the reservation in 1912, when I was seventeen. He came back from the Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wearing a white man's suit with a high starched collar. He came back with twenty books and a head full of education. He came back lonely and ignorant. He looked like a full-blood despite the way he'd parted his short hair straight down the middle, but he didn't remember one story about his own tribe. He didn't remember one honor song. We worked a trade to educate one another. He read to me until eventually I learned to make out the words. Our favorite book was Pride and Prejudice. I liked that little white girl, Elizabeth Bennet, because she had wit and a backbone. I thought she would have made a good Sioux.”

“Maybe the higher powers are scolding me, telling me to let the lie nourish me as I have nourished it. But it's time for the lies to perish, don't you think?”

“That was the legend. That was Evie's understanding of her own history.”

“Harley alone remained behind to entertain his grandmother. He saw there were two moons in the world: one on television and one in the sky outside his grandmother's window.

“‘Two moons,’ he told Margaret, curling his thumb and forefinger into a telescope he peeked through.

“‘More than that,’ Margaret told him, ‘many, many more. For every person who can see it, there's another one.’

“Harley covered his eyes with his hands. The idea filled all the skies he could imagine, and all the rooms, and the spaces between trees, until moons like opaque marbles tumbled out of heaven to roll in a spectacular avalanche down the buttes.

“‘That way everyone has a moon of their own.’”

“He felt the moon enter the back of his head. It merged with bone and popped his ears. He felt an expansion, then an adjustment. Harley stood before his grandmother with the moon in his skull, eyes pouring cool light onto her quilt-covered body. Stellar wind rushed through the passages of his ears, wave upon wave like the undulating roar of a conch shell.”

“She was saying, ‘That is the moon. That is the way into the moon.’

“He shook his head because he didn't understand. So she pointed to the television screen, where the men walked in a floating manner that was both heavy and light.

“‘They can only walk on the surface,’ Margaret mouthed.

“Harley couldn't think. His mind was squeezed, crushed close behind his eyes. The moon left him so suddenly he fell onto the bed. His small arms slammed across Margaret's legs, making them twitch and shudder. Harley began to cry.

“‘It's all right,’ Margaret told him. ‘It'll be all right. But remember that feeling. Remember what it's like to be the moon, and you, and the darkness and the light.’ Her hand moved in a circle.”

“Margaret Many Wounds was dancing on the moon. Look at the crooked tracks I make like a snake, she thought. At first it seemed it would take her a long time to make the circuit. Am I dancing or flying? she wondered when instead she completed it very quickly. Names came to her, though she had never learned them. That is the Sea of Crises, she knew, and that is the Sea of Serenity. She crossed the Sea of Fertility and then backtracked to the Sea of Tranquillity. That was where she felt Harley's presence.

“‘Takoja,’ she called with her spirit. ‘Look at me, look at the magic. There is still magic in the world.’

“Margaret danced beyond the astronauts and their stiff metal flag. She kept moving forward until she came to the beginning of her trail, mired in the gritty Lake of Dreams. She raised a foot and found Wanagi Tacanku, the Spirit Road, rippling beneath her feet. She set off, no longer dancing, walking briskly toward the council fire, five steps beyond the edge of the universe.”

“That glaring tree is my mother. She watched us from the slope, her hair wild and fingers snapping, her thick roots buried deep in the earth, so deep they reached that place where there is nothing but heat and magma—all the planet's churning anger.”

“’…We married Indian way.’ I knew my mother meant lived in sin, but she wasn't Catholic like me. She didn't have to go to the Catholic reservation school, where the old-crow nuns pecked our souls to pieces.”

“Okay, I told myself. Mama is the grass. And me? I couldn't have said as a child. But now I know that I am not like Anna Thunder. I am one of those seeds that will push up tentative shoots wherever I land.”

“It was Chanel No. 5, and I should know, because I once had enough of it to fill my porcelain tub. I had a sudden whim to submerge my flesh in its sweetness… I went in slow, made it a misery, and when the liquid closed over me, with just my head poking out like the olive in a co*cktail, I knew I was something spun of gold or mined from a vein of precious rock. I knew I was special.”

“I forgot what it's like to see eyes clean of fear.”

“’I am going to right a wrong of history.’ It felt strange to speak my thoughts; I had never announced my intentions before. The room filled with quiet, became heavy; I thought my bones would collapse and settle beneath the rest of me. My heart stopped in that moment, I know it did, until my hand massaged the spot and my voice exploded the silence: ‘You just watch.’”

“’Little spider, let me go,’ I finally said, and Crystal released me so quickly I doubted I had ever been held. But that was good; I had to be firm with myself. ‘Fate will never ride me again,’ I told Crystal. ‘I broke that horse a long time ago and kicked it with my heels. I had to take my own spirit in hand, or it would have shriveled like gauze held to a flame, been consumed, and my mind would be in too many pieces for me to scrape together. So I am here, working my fate, driving it before it has the chance to drive me… I am Providence,’ I said.”

“My husband and I didn't live in his shack for very long. Calvin had stopped drinking, was hired as a member of the tribal police force, and was soon building me a house, a real house with electricity, indoor plumbing, and a phone line. I wanted tiles in the bathroom, a double sink in the kitchen, and a picture window. I wanted shag carpeting and a brick fireplace that didn't even have to work. I was greedy not for things, but rather order. I thought I could organize happiness through careful housekeeping, matching plates and flatware, tasteful drapes, and a vacuum cleaner. Maybe I thought I could eradicate the past with disinfectant or the sucking hose. But it clung to my husband, spawned cells in his blood… I prepared dishes no respectable Dakota had ever tasted—Welsh rarebit and chilled gazpacho soup—because their foreignness made me feel even safer.”

“’I’m worried about your sister,’ she told me. ‘I think she's lost herself in something unhappy.’”

“It was 1935, and a good portion of North Dakota had dried up and blown away. Grit peppered our food, coated our teeth, and silted our water. We heard that cities as distant as Chicago and New York were sprinkled with Plains topsoil. I thought it was fitting somehow. I imagined angry ancestors fed up with Removal grabbing fistfuls of parched earth to fling toward Washington, making the president choke on dust and ashes. We prayed for rain, and when it did not come, when instead we were strangled by consumption, many people said the end of the world had come to the Sioux reservation. I was not a doomsday disciple. I wouldn't let the world end while my son Chaske still had so much living to do.”

“I didn't tell my niece that at her age I had dreamt about Čuwignaka Duta, Red Dress, my grandmother's sister. I had heard her insistent voice, crackling with energy, murmuring promises of a power passed on through the bloodlines from one woman to the next.”

“In Father La Frambois's view of the world, we were already a degraded people, whom he intended to elevate, single-handedly, into the radiant realm of civilization.”

“I nurtured secrecy to avoid derision.”

“…[Reverend] Pyke's vision of America: a place where animals were bred for food behind neat fences, mountains were leveled, valleys filled, rivers straightened, and grass trained with a ruler.”

“Koda— friend—look at this sullen brown grass, dispirited because winter is coming to punish it. This, to me, is English. It is little pebbles on my tongue, gravel, the kind of thing you chew but cannot swallow. Dakota is the lush spring grass that moves like water and tastes sweet.”

“…the staging of Macbeth.

“’You have to help me with this,’ she pleaded, so I became her assistant.

“I had read the play aloud under the tutelage of Father La Frambois and was curious to see what Fanny and the soldiers would make of it…

“Many of the roles were combined and speeches cut. Fanny insisted we would get to the meat of the story and trim the rest, and by the time the officers in the company had their say, the scenes were mostly swordplay, complete with uncorked sabers and plumed hats. One of my jobs was to prompt the actors in their lines, what lines remained, and the text became as familiar to me as Scripture, until I began to confuse the two and would quote Shakespeare as readily as passages from Ecclesiastes.”

“I am inevitable as light or darkness, steady as rain.”

“Many times I ran alongside those tracks and waved at the bleak copper faces. You are Dakota, I called to them. You are Dakota. One time I stood in front of a chuffing engine and tried to keep it from moving forward, but it blasted through me. I saw the language shrivel, and though I held out my hands to catch the words, so many of them slipped away, beyond recall. I am a talker now and chatter in my people's ears until I grow weary of my own voice. I am memory, I tell them when they're sleeping.”

“Mercury nodded and smiled. She held out her hands, and Charlene was surprised to see how smooth the woman's palms were, hardly lined at all, as if the fate once etched there had been wiped clean.”

“’You misused the medicine because you have a bad example. If you are selfish with it, someday it will be selfish with you. We do not own the power, we aren't supposed to direct it ourselves. Give it up if you don't understand my meaning. Put the medicine behind you. Will you do that for yourself and for your people?’”

“…she needs to know both sides. Otherwise she'll stand off-balance and walk funny and talk out of one side of her mouth. Tell her two stories."

“’Tunkašida Wakan Tanka, my friend is ready for the hanbdeč’ya. He wants to send you his voice so you will notice his prayers. But he might not have the strength to stand up and speak to you, so I am asking you to help him.’ Frank Pipe expressed himself in Dakota, finding the words so effortlessly his grandfather nodded. Harley's pulse quickened. His friend was in the spirit, and the sight of it moved Harley, gave him a spark of hope.

“But now he was alone on Angry Butte, beneath the face of the sky. ‘I have to stand up for myself,’ he said aloud. He tried a tentative prayer: ‘Tunkašida Wakan Tanka, you know everything, you made my heart. Let me look into it for the first time.’

“Harley taught himself to pray from a hole in the ground. It felt appropriate to be simultaneously buried in the earth and thrust into the air, a lone figure exposed to the elements.”

“She laughed, her hand covering her mouth. ‘This isn't heaven,’ she said. ‘Who wants to go there? This is the edge of the world, which is really not so different from what you know. Time keeps moving, it can't help itself…’”

“’You see? A warrior is not what you think.’

“Ghost Horse didn't smile, but Harley warmed to him. He had never felt such trust before. I could put my life in his hands, Harley thought.

“’Takoja,’ Margaret called to her grandson. ‘You don't know it, but you've been with us for three days.’

“’It was so quick!’ Harley protested.

“’When you remember this vision in the future, you'll realize that it was long. You have seen many things… Think of us over the years, and I promise you will learn something new every time you turn us in your mind.’”

“’…So when you move through those old steps, remember that you are dancing a rebellion and that the pretty fringes are hiding blood and flesh and captured hair.’

“Red Dress rose, her train of rattles hissing. ‘One final question,’ she said. ‘Did you see your uncle?’

“Harley answered, ‘Hau.’

“Red Dress sighed. She looked at Harley and reluctantly stepped away. ‘I want you to be happy, because I know what it is to be sad.’ Red Dress turned to leave.

“’Iyotiye wakiye,’ echoed in Harley's ears. I am sad.

“The woman's form quickly blended into the darkness. Harley thought she was gone, but a final message carried across the earth: ‘You are dancing a rebellion.’”

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THE GRASS DANCER by Susan Power (2024)

TITLE—The Grass Dancer

GENRE—literary Indigenous historical fiction

Summary:

My thoughts:

Further Reading—

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Favorite Quotes—

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