| While the Locust Slept: A Memoir Contributor(s): Razor, Peter (Author) |
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ISBN: 0873514394 ISBN-13: 9780873514392 Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press OUR PRICE: $17.06 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2002 Annotation: In stark, haunting prose, first-time author Peter Razor chronicles his survival of abuse and bigotry at a state orphanage in the 1930s and the brutal farm indenture that followed. Disclosing his story through flashbacks and relying on research from his own case files, Razor pieces together the shattered fragments of his boyhood into a memoir that reads as compellingly as a novel. Abandoned as an infant at the State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota, Razor is raised by abusive workers who thought of him as nothing more than "a dirty Injun." Cut off from his family and his heritage, he turns inward, forced to learn about the world on his own. After failed attempts to run away from the orphanage, he is indentured by the state to an abusive, reclusive farm family. Beaten, poorly fed, clothed in rags, and worked like slave labor, he struggles to attend high school and begins to dream of another life. Razor's stark and often chilling story, devoid of self-pity, recalls with haunting clarity the years he, like the locust, patiently waited to awaken and emerge. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - Native American & Aboriginal - History |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 00069719 |
| Series: Minnesota |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.2" W x 7.8" (0.50 lbs) 200 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Ethnic Orientation - Native American - Sex & Gender - Masculine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In stark, haunting prose, first-time author Peter Razor recalls his early years as a ward of the State of Minnesota. Disclosing his story through flashbacks and relying on research from his own case files, Razor pieces together the shattered fragments of his boyhood into a memoir that reads as compellingly as a novel. Abandoned as an infant at the State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota, Peter Razor is raised by abusive workers who thought of him as nothing more than "a dirty Injun." Cut off from his family and his heritage, he turns inward, forced to learn about the world on his own. After failed attempts to run away from the orphanage, he is indentured by the state to an abusive, reclusive farm family. Beaten, poorly fed, clothed in rags, and worked like slave labor, he struggles to attend high school and begins to dream of another life. Razor's stark and often chilling story, devoid of self-pity, recalls with haunting clarity the years he, like the locust, patiently waited to awaken and emerge. |