I think the way I come at a story has always been from thinking about the past, (American Indian history, my family’s history, my tribe’s history) an… - LeAnne Howe

I do think that reading aloud, or performing one’s own work is very helpful to the writing process. You can hear the voices you are creating, see the scenes you’ve created, and where the text falters.

If it seems like a contradiction, it is. But that is the basis for all stories.

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.