She laughs when she tells that story now, though the tendency to both fetishize and misunderstand Native American culture endures, in depressingly familiar ways. That’s one reason the Kiowa-Cherokee novelist Oscar Hokeah, who earned wide praise for his 2022 debut, “Calling for a Blanket Dance,” sees the continued necessity of putting books like “Council” in the public consciousness, even in an era of increased awareness and visibility.
“Mona portrays Native people in a very modern and contemporary and also a very honest way,” he said. “I think sometimes whenever readers want to see only our powwows, only our ceremonies, it can be reductive. Those are very positive things, but it’s also a version of erasure, you know? We don’t want to be seen strictly as victims, but we also don’t want to be seen as mythical creatures either.”
Power’s editor, Rachel Kahan, sees a different, more passive kind of prejudice at work, too. “Often in the literary and the entertainment world, there is this preoccupation with the new and the groundbreaking and the vanguard, and sometimes it comes at the expense of writers who do their best work later in life,” she said. “Mona has created an amazing piece of art out of all the things that have happened to her, with this incredible perspective that maybe a 30-something wouldn’t have.”
Indeed, for all its harrowing depictions of heartache and deprivation, the book is threaded through with hard-earned grace that culminate with Power’s own stand-in, Sissy, in grateful middle age.
“This story is very much about healing,” Power said. “Not that healing is ever complete. It’s a process, but you really can make huge leaps. I’m in a place now I never thought was possible — so much healthier, so much happier, so much more stable. After losing decades, really, life is just starting all over again.”