In this cycle of poetry and stories, Navajo writer Luci Tapahonso shares memories of her home in Shiprock, New Mexico, and of the places and people there. Through these celebrations of birth, partings, and reunions, this gifted writer displays both her love of the Navajo world and her resonant use of language. Blending memoir and fiction in the storytelling style common to many Indian traditions, Tapahonso's writing shows that life and death are intertwined, and that the Navajo people live with the knowledge that identity is formed by knowing about the people to whom one belongs. The...

Wrapped in blankets and looking at the stars, a young Navajo girl listened long ago to stories that would guide her for the rest of her life. "Such summer evenings were filled with quiet voices, dogs barking far away, the fire crackling, and often we could hear the faint drums and songs of a ceremony somewhere in the distance," writes Luci Tapahonso in this compelling collection.

Blue Horses Rush In takes its title from a poem about the birth of her granddaughter Chamisa, whose heart "pounded quickly and we recognized / the sound of horses running: / the thundering of...

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.
These engaging words draw us into a workaday world that, magically but never surprisingly, has room for the Diyin Dine e (the Holy People), Old Salt Woman, and Dawn Boy. When she describes her grandson s First Laugh Ceremony...

This popular poetry volume expresses Navajo lifein its wholeness and sweetness, stressing thecolloquial wisdom, humor, and courage of ordinaryNavajo people. Some of the text is in Navajo. JoeBruchac says of the author of this volume, Shepresents a wide cast of characters, talking, living, arguing, even dying against the background of a place and a time which are uniquely Native American, yet accessible to a wide range of readers.