Module 4 - Novel by Cynthia Leitich Smith - TWU - Multicultural Literature

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Smith, Leitich Smith. 2001. RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME. New York: HarperCollins Publisher. ISBN 9780688173975.

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I really enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. The cover of the book threw me a little and I wasn't sure of what I was getting. It turns out that this 14 year-old girl lives in Kansas, but with Native American ties to Oklahoma. In the beginning of the story, her best friend is killed, and she must deal with this terrible loss. She had also lost her mother in the last few years. This is a huge burden for a young teen to deal with. She has a loving family, and they allow her the time and space to discover who she is and the best way for her to deal with these terrible losses.

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Sometimes I felt like I was missing something in the story, and I would have to flip back pages, and reread sections, looking for details that I thought I had overlooked, but I found out that is just how the story is written. I had to do some reading "between-the-lines" and piece together some of the story on my own. At first this bothered me, but after awhile I grew used to it, and I kind of liked it. When I finished, I pondered the book and I decided that the story felt real and true as to how a teenager might deal with these types of problems. Her father lives in Guam, on a military base, but he remains in close contact with the family by phone. Despite the difference, a crucial conversation to the story between father and daughter, helps Rain to deal with some of her issues, and the distance does not seem a problem. She has an extremely loving, and involved brother and grandfather, not to mention a great-aunt, and a "soon-to-be" sister-in-law that listen to Rain and help her figure out ways to go on with her life.

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Rain is a "mixed breed" Indian. Her mother was Muscogee Creek-Cherokee and her father has an Irish and German background. She doesn't look Native American, but she feels some ties to her mother's side. In the book, she doesn't want to actively pursue her great-aunt's "Indian Camp," but nevertheless she figures out a way to be a part of it, without actually being a part of it. She ends up feeling a strong connection to the other kids in the camp, and also being able to explain to a news reporter what it is to be a Native American.

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I liked that this story was a non-traditional look at Native American youth. Rain loves computers, and has created a website, and has studied computer programming. She likes science fiction, and movies, and walking her dog. She has friends that are Native American, African American, and White. She is an honor student at school, reads teen magazines, and likes Cherry Coke and CrackerJacks. This is a side of Native American youth that we don't often see in books, and many readers are going to be surprised by this.

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It mentions in the book that Rain's mother was born and raised in Eufala, OK, and then went to a semester of college in Haskell, KS, at the Cherokee college there. I live very close to Eufala, OK, and in fact my town's high school football team used to play them each season, before we had to change divisions. Some of my local Cherokee high school students choose to go to Haskell, KS, for college. This all felt very real and accurate for me as a reader, and I really connected with it. I want to place this book in my high school library, because I think this will be one of the reasons that the students will enjoy it.

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Cynthia Leitich Smith was raised in Kansas, and went to college there. She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, so she writes this book as an insider. I have a Cherokee heritage, and I work and live inside the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. There is a high population of Cherokee students in my school district, and I work in the high school. I felt very comfortable with this story as feeling authentic, and there wasn't anything that felt out of place culturally.

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One of the cultural markers that I found in the book was when Rain's Native American friend tried to give her an Indian dream catcher. I liked her reaction to it: "This looks like what you want, " Dmitri said, jumping down from his doorway, holding a dreamcatcher. "Hang it above the bed." "It's beautiful," I said, "but dreamcatchers are kind of....trendy, don't you think?" "My mother made it," he answered. What with that foot crowding my mouth, I could hardly find a reply. Too bad Dmitri couldn't sell me a word-catcher to let good ones through and trap the rest. It was just that I'd seen so many tacky-looking dream-catchers over the years, the kind with fakelore gift tags and flamingo-pink feathers. I looked again, more closely this time. The one Dmitri had shown me was beautiful. Being the real thing made a huge difference.

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Another cultural marker that I found was in Rain's 3rd grade class the teacher gave an assignment,. The kids were required to dress as an important person and to give a report about that person. Rain "got it in her head that she wanted to pick an Indian woman, and a trip to the library narrowed her choices to Sacajawea or Pocahontas. She chose former Kansas senator Nancy Kassebaum instead." I really enjoyed that Rain finally felt that she could think outside her "cultural box" and be who and whatever she wanted to be. This is an important lesson.

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I would be thrilled to suggest this book to high school students. It is a well-written book that has an interesting story and I think students will be able to relate to it. It is a great story of friendship and family love, and it deals with some important issues like the loss of a loved ones, and also finding your true identify within yourself. It is great for independent reading, and could be grouped with other novels by popular Native American authors. I also hope that there will soon me more books like this as I think that they will prove to be popular reading.

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From Publishers Weekly

Multiple plot lines and nonlinear storytelling may make it difficult to enter Smith's (Jingle Dancer) complex novel, but the warmth and texture of the writing eventually serve as ample reward for readers. The sensitive yet witty narrator, 14-year-old Cassidy Rain Berghoff, grows up in a small Kansas town as one of the few people with some Native American heritage. That experience alone might challenge Rain, but Smith creates a welter of conflicts. Rain's mother is dead (she was struck by lightning), and as the novel opens, her best friend is killed in a car accident just after he and Rain realize their friendship has grown into romance. Six months later, her older brother urges her to go to her great-aunt's Indian Camp. At first she shrugs it off, but later volunteers to photograph the camp for the town paper and begins to share her Aunt Georgia's commitment to it. When public funding for the camp becomes a contested issue in the city council, Rain decides to enroll. Some of Smith's devices such as opening each chapter with a snippet from Rain's journal add depth and clarify Rain's relationships for readers, although other elements (the detailing of song lyrics playing in the background, for instance) seem stilted. Even so, readers will feel the affection of Rain's loose-knit family and admire the way that they, like the author with the audience, allow Rain to draw her own conclusions about who she is and what her heritage means to her.