Recent Works by Indigenous Authors
Every year, The New York Public Library celebrates Indigenous Peoples' Day in October and National Native American Heritage Month in November. This book list shines a light on titles published in the past couple of years written by Indigenous authors that span genres including literary fiction, memoir, poetry, romance, thriller, historical nonfiction, and more.
For further reading, check out this list of 20 recommended reads, first published in 2020, that serves as an introduction to a rich and diverse heritage of fiction, nonfiction, history, poetry, memoir, and more by and about Indigenous people in the United States.
Novels & Stories
Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
Tracing the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 to the aftermath of Orvil Red Feather's shooting, Opal tries to hold her family together while Orvil becomes emotionally reliant on prescription medications, and his younger brother, suffering from PTSD, secretly enacts blood rituals to connect to his Cheyenne heritage.
I Was a Teenage Slasher
by Stephen Graham Jones
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, 17, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography.
The Mighty Red
by Louise Erdrich
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. The Mighty Red is a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.
Indian Burial Ground
by Nick Medina
When the facts surrounding her boyfriend Roddy’s apparent suicide don’t add up, Noemi, suspecting something sinister is stalking their tribal lands, relies on help from her uncle, who has returned to the reservation, bringing with him secrets, horror and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death.
Where They Last Saw Her
by Marcie R. Rendon
Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring. When she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them.Fire Exit
by Morgan Talty
Consumed by a long-held secret about his daughter across the river on the Penobscot Reservation, Charles Lamosway grapples with his past, a lost love and the burdens of family as he searches for redemption. as he searches for redemption.
The Truth According to Ember
by Danica Nava
Ember Lee Cardinal, a Chickasaw woman who can't catch a break, serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more. When a scheming colleague catches her in a compromising position with Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy, on a work trip, and blackmails Ember, she must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.
Swim Home to the Vanished
by Brendan Shay Basham
Damien, a grief-stricken young man, lands in a fishing village where he falls under the spell of Ana Maria, rumored to have had something to do with her daughter's death, and forms a strange kinship with one of her surviving daughters, who is driven by afierce need for revenge.
Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare: Stories
by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
A short story collection follows contemporary native Hawaiian and Japanese women through tales including an encounter with a wild pig on a haunted highway and an elderly widow who sees her dead lover in a giant flower.
A Council of Dolls
by Mona Susan Power
Details the story of three women from different generations, told through the stories of the dolls they carried in 1888, 1925, and 1961 bringing to light the damage done to Indigenous people through history.
A Song Over Miskwaa Rapids
by Linda LeGarde Grover
Margie Robineau, fighting for her family's long-held allotment land, uncovers events connected to a long-ago escape plan, and the burial—at once figurative and painfully real—of not one crime but two. While Margie pieces the facts together, Dale Ann is confronted by her own tightly held secrets and the truth that the long ago and the now are all indelibly linked, no matter how much we try to forget.
The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories
by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
These stories, a debut collection, confronts long-reaching effects of settler-colonialism on Native lives in a series of gritty, wildly imaginative stories. They grapple with a complex and painful history alongside an inheritance of beauty, ceremony, and storytelling.
If I Stopped Haunting You
by Colby Wilkens
It's been months since horror author Penelope Skinner threw a book at Neil Storm. But he was so infuriating, with his sparkling green eyes and his bestselling horror novels that claimed to break Native stereotypes. And now she’s a publishing pariah and hasn’t been able to write a word since. So when her friend invites her on a too-good-to-be-true writers retreat in a supposedly haunted Scottish castle, she seizes the opportunity. Of course, some things really are too good to be true.
Poetry & Memoir
Mother
by m.s. RedCherries
mother is a work of poetry rooted in an intimate fracture: an Indigenous child is adopted out of her tribe and raised by a non-Indian family. Through oral histories, family lore, and imagined pasts and futures, a collage of their community emerges, raising profound questions about adoption, inheritance, and Indigenous identity in America.
Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home
by Chris La Tray
A storyteller of Chippewa heritage tells the story of his journey to discover his indigenous roots, how he embraced his full identity and joins the struggle of the Little Shells’ tribe towards federal recognition.
Whiskey Tender
by Deborah Jackson Taffa
Reflecting on her past and present, the author, a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the "melting pot" of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost: Poems
by Sage Ravenwood
Sage Ravenwood's debut poetry collection explores surviving trauma, navigating the everyday through a deaf lens, and finding Indigenous acceptance and belonging.
Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir
by Thomas C. Gannon
Catalogs a lifetime of bird sightings to explore the part-Lakota author’s search for identity and his reckoning with colonialism’s violence against Indigenous humans, animals, and land.
Nonfiction
By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
by Rebecca Nagle
A reporter and member of the Cherokee Nation recounts the generations-long fight for tribal sovereignty in Eastern Oklahoma and the 1990s murder case that led the Supreme Court to reaffirm native rights to the land.
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
by Ned Blackhawk
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.The Indian Card: Who Gets To Be Native in America
by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz
At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded, the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. Being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Through in-depth interviews, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes.
Rediscovering Turtle Island: A First Peoples Account of the Sacred Geography of America
by Taylor Keen
An exploration of Indigenous cosmology and history in North America. Examines the complexities of Indigenous legends and creation myths and reveals common oral traditions across much of North America. Explores the history of Cahokia, the Mississippian Mound Builder Empire of1050-1300 CE, told through the voice of Honga, a Native leader of the time. Presents an Indigenous revisionist history regarding Thomas Jefferson, expansionist doctrine, and Manifest Destiny.
We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth
We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today’s environmental crisis. The book draws on interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic regions, who share their knowledge and experience, their questions, their observations, and their dreams of maintaining the best relationship possible to all of life.
Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America
by Matika Wilbur
A photographic celebration of contemporary Native American life and an examination of important issues the community faces today.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.