If you are told from Day One that you are that tribal person and that tribal home, that's who you are. And Day One's the simplest way to explain that, day One's what I told her. If you respect Indian country, we respect you.

Melanie Benjamin

Categorized in : Politics

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

Melanie Benjamin

writing sometimes

What very mysterious things days were. Sometimes they fly by, and other times they seem to last forever, yet they are all exactly twenty-four hours. There's quite a lot we don't know about them.

Melanie Benjamin

mysterious-things forever time

There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers but it is the sins of the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.

Melanie Benjamin

sin mother father

I suppose at some point, we all have to decide which memories - real or otherwise - to hold on to, and which ones to let go.

Melanie Benjamin

real letting-go memories

I see things beyond what other people see. I am always looking for hidden corners and closets of a life that I feel aren't explored either by the person who lived it or the people writing about it.

Melanie Benjamin

closets writing people

My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look.

Melanie Benjamin

distance adults silly

Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.

Melanie Benjamin

etiquette age reason

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

Melanie Benjamin

ungrateful tired sound

Unlike men, women got less sentimental as we aged, I was discovering.

Melanie Benjamin

discovering sentimental men

Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead I would define it.

Melanie Benjamin

size

I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past.

Melanie Benjamin

girl children past

Why, then, did I always feel as if his happiness was my responsibility? It wasn't fair for him to burden me with that. It had never been fair.

Melanie Benjamin

burden responsibility feels

I like to imagine the "what ifs" of history.

Melanie Benjamin

what-if imagine ifs

Most readers of historical fiction are content to just get caught up in a good story, and that is what I want to do as an author. I am not concerned with people knowing exactly what I made up and what is real.

Melanie Benjamin

knowing real people

I certainly incorporate facts into my fiction. I take the basic facts from the life of my subject and I pick and choose what to use to construct a really interesting novel. I don't let facts get in the way of my imagination and my exploration of the subject's emotions and relationships.

Melanie Benjamin

imagination fiction interesting

Wonderland was all we had in common, after all; Wonderland was what was denied the two of us. I had denied him his; he had denied me mine.

Melanie Benjamin

wonderland common two

If you are told from Day One that you are that tribal person and that tribal home, that's who you are. And Day One's the simplest way to explain that.

Melanie Benjamin

politics

Native American did bring up that whole issue about that( Pocahontas) label, and my advice to Native American -- and I used an example -- is that in Indian country, Native American tribes are very community-oriented, native American tribes are those types of people where Native American tribes will embrace you as part of Native American tribes community and then Native American tribes will recognize you as Native American tribes community from there on.

Melanie Benjamin

politics