I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.

Joseph Boyden

Categorized in : Thinking Play Want

There's a few scholars that object to how the italicized sections suggest that Native people are to take some part in the blame for how colonization occurred. But I say, "Yes they are." Not nearly as much blame as the colonizers, of course. But we are not just victims. I hate this idea that we are all just victimized and oppressed and etcetera etcetera. It's dehumanizing in its own way.

hate people ideas

When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.

niece taken thinking

There were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case.

fire civilization thinking

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

stories fiction needs

From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge.

crafts challenges stories