Learning is supposed to be fun, (or funny) dramatic, and full of irony. A performance. - LeAnne Howe

We are still a ‘vacant map’ as Native writers of Native literature. But, a story chooses a writer, not the other way around. So I believe we write, perform, because we must. Nothing else is of importance. Native writers will grow and develop as the stories search them out. That’s exciting and the stories will change the world.

Humor defuses pain. Humor gives the narrators in my stories agency to tilt at the ever-whirling windmills of colonization. Humor opens a window on historic pain and trauma that American Indians dealt with at the hands of the federal government. Loss of land, loss of dignity, loss of identity, and of course the loss of a brother or sister, parent—which in my great grandmother’s era was a common event.

Writing is a form of activism. Again, let’s not separate into small boxes, ‘activism’ versus writing. Native people, I think, prefer to think in more holistic terms. A story is active and a story changes the world. A story is changing the world as I write this.