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Julian Brave NoiseCat Shares His Favorite Indigenous Books & Bookstores
Debut author of We Survived the Night reflects on the books and bookstores that fueled his love for storytelling.
Julian Brave NoiseCat opens up about the Indigenous authors and bookstores that ground his sense of story and community, sharing that his favorites include Massy Books in Vancouver, British Columbia’s Chinatown, and Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was born, owned by the great Louise Erdrich. His debut, We Survived the Night, is built from five years of field reporting and personal reflection. It’s a resonant, formally bold exploration of identity, inheritance, and the enduring strength of Indigenous life.
These are the books he shared as his favorites by Indigenous authors:
“Much has been said about Tommy Orange’s groundbreaking tale of urban Indian life set in the sometimes violent American city where he and I both grew up, Oakland, California.
But I think people overlook how clever the structure of this polyphonic novel is. Tracing the lives of urban Indians around the Bay Area back to Oklahoma and through historic chapters of resistance and dysfunction like the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz, the characters in Orange’s book form a circle, like a powwow. And then it all ends with a bang!
There There only came out seven years ago and it’s already considered an American classic. I hear high schoolers across the country are being assigned this one, and rightly so.”
“Silko writes the story of a Native veteran suffering from PTSD and of a community besieged by ranchers and nuclear testing in a way that feels both razor sharp and at times lost in the haze of the spiritual sickness of colonization. I remember being riveted and haunted by this one when I first read it in high school.”
Dive into his debut:
A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work today, and the director of the Oscar®-nominated documentary, Sugarcane, We Survived the Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.
Other remarkable books to check out by Indigenous and Native American authors:
A young man is haunted by a mythological specter bent on stealing everything he loves in this unsettling horror from the author of Indian Burial Ground and Sisters of the Lost Nation.
From the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Never Whistle at Night, a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across Chicago to a momentous meeting, inspired by the cult classic The Warriors.
A sweeping and deeply personal account of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.
This Land teaches readers that American land, from our backyards to our schools to Disney World, are the traditional homelands of many Indigenous nations. This Land will spark curiosity and encourage readers to explore the history of the places they live and the people who have lived there throughout time and today.
