Louise Ehrdrichs Totally Biased List of Tookies Favorite Books

Acknowledgement #

Thanks to NancyJ of Goodreads, who entered this (by hand?) into a list at Goodreads lists

Short Perfect Novels #

*Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel
*Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
**Sula, by Toni Morrison
The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad
The All of It, by Jeannette Haine
Winter in the Blood, by James Welch
Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle
The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald
First Love, by Ivan Turgenev
*Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
**Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee
Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

Ghost-Managing Book List #

The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones
Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis
*Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice
Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson
*The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto
The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah
*Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe
*The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker
Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth
Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet
Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor

Sailboat Table #

The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett
Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector
Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez
The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline
A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James
*There There, by Tommy Orange
Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine
*Underland, by Robert Macfarlane
The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Deacon King Kong, by James McBride
The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth
Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada
The Door, by Magda Szabo
The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
*Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
*The Overstory, by Richard Power
Night Train, by Lise Erdrich
*Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado
The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by
John Freeman
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
*Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore
Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones
The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans
Tenth of December, by George Saunders
Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon
Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam
Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich
Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny
*All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews
The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen
Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan
NW, by Zadie Smith
*Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
*Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
*Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley
Erasure, by Percival Everett
Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn
Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami

Books for Banned Love #

*Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
*The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje
*Euphoria, by Lily King
The Red and the Black, by Stendahl
Luster, by Raven Leilani
Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday

Sublime Books #

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones
The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Thousand Trails Home, by Seth Kantner
House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday
*Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück
*The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, by Robert Bly
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, by Mahmoud Darwish
Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Andrew Hurley
The Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia E. Butler
Map: Collected and Last Poems, by Wisława Szymborska
In the Lateness of the World, by Carolyn Forché
Angels, by Denis Johnson
Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz
Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam
*Exhalation, by Ted Chaing
Strange Empire, by Joseph Kinsey Howard

The Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia Butler:
**Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy

Indigineous Lives #

Holding Our World Together, by Brenda J. Child
American Indian Stories, by Zitkala-Sa
A History of My Brief Body, by Billy-Ray Belcourt
The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa
and Bruce Albert
*Apple: Skin to the Core, by Eric Gansworth
*Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot
The Blue Sky, by Galsan Tschinag
*Crazy Brave, by Joy Harjo
Standoff, by Jacqueline Keeler
*Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie
Spirit Car, by Diane Wilson
*Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis
Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, by Adam Fortunate Eagle
Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq
Walking the Rez Road, by Jim Northrup
Mamaskatch, by Darrel J. McLeod

Indigenous Poetry #

*Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, by Joy Harjo
Ghost River (Wakpá Wanági), by Trevino L. Brings Plenty
The Book of Medicines, by Linda Hogan
The Smoke That Settled, by Jay Thomas Bad Heart Bull
The Crooked Beak of Love, by Duane Niatum
Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier
Little Big Bully, by Heid E. Erdrich
A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, by Eric Gansworth
NDN Coping Mechanisms, by Billy-Ray Belcourt
The Invisible Musician, by Ray A. Young Bear
*When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through,
edited by Joy Harjo
New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich
The Failure of Certain Charms, by Gordon Henry Jr.

Indigenous History and Nonfiction #

*Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith
Decolonizing Methodologies, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian
War of 1862, edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R.
Woodworth
Being Dakota, by Amos E. Oneroad and Alanson B. Skinner
Boarding School Blues, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller,
and Lorene Sisquoc
Masters of Empire, by Michael A. McDonnell
Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee,
by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior
Boarding School Seasons, by Brenda J. Child
They Called It Prairie Light, by K. Tsianina Lomawaima
To Be a Water Protector, by Winona LaDuke
Minneapolis: An Urban Biography, by Tom Weber

Tookies Pandemic Reading #

Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales
*The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston
The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea
*The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch
Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
*Let’s Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell
The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, by Patrick O’Brian
*The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh
The Golden Wolf Saga, by Linnea Hartsuyker
*Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Coyote Warrior, by Paul VanDevelder

Incarceration #

Felon, by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa
Waiting for an Echo, by Christine Montross, M.D.
The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner
*The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
This Is Where, by Louise K. Waakaa’igan
I Will Never See the World Again, by Ahmet Altan
Sorrow Mountain, by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley
American Prison, by Shane Bauer
Solitary, by Albert Woodfox
Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Y. Davis
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, by Ai Weiwei

Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters.
—Tookie

If you are interested in the books on these lists, please seek
them out at your local independent bookstore. Miigwech!

A Link #

Tookie's Indigenous Lives List at Bookshop

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