White Birch, Red Hawthorn: A Memoir Contributor(s): Murphy, Nora (Author) |
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ISBN: 1517901324 ISBN-13: 9781517901325 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press OUR PRICE: $16.16 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - General - History | United States - State & Local - Midwest(ia,il,in,ks,mi,mn,mo,nd,ne,oh,sd,wi - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - Native American Studies |
Dewey: B |
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 4.9" W x 7.9" (0.50 lbs) 152 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Native American |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: "This is conquered land." The Dakota woman's words, spoken at a community meeting in St. Paul, struck Nora Murphy forcefully. Her own Irish great-great grandparents, fleeing the potato famine, had laid claim to 160 acres in a virgin maple grove in Minnesota. That her dispossessed ancestors' homestead, The Maples, was built upon another, far more brutal dispossession is the hard truth underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, a memoir of Murphy's search for the deeper connections between this contested land and the communities who call it home. In twelve essays, each dedicated to a tree significant to Minnesota, Murphy tells the story of the grove that, long before the Irish arrived, was home to three Native tribes: the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk. She notes devastating strategies employed by the U.S. government to wrest the land from the tribes, but also revisits iconic American tales that subtly continue to promote this displacement--the Thanksgiving story, the Paul Bunyan myth, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Murphy travels to Ireland to search out another narrative long hidden--that of her great-great-grandmother's transformative journey from North Tipperary to The Maples. In retrieving these stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn uncovers lingering wounds of the past--and the possibility that, through connection to this suffering, healing can follow. The next step is simple, Murphy tells us: listen. |