Thunder Song: Essays

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

"Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe's writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope." --Elle

The author of the award-winning memoir Red Paint returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States today

Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art--in particular music--and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

Author: Sasha Lapointe
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Published: 03/05/2024
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 8.21h x 5.44w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781640096356


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 01/22/2024
BookPage 03/01/2024
Shelf Awareness 03/16/2024
Booklist 10/21/2024

About the Author
Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe is a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes. She is the author of Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award, the Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir, and an NPR Best Book of the Year, and the poetry collection Rose Quartz. She received a double MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Tacoma, Washington.