No Parole Today

by Laura Tohe

Overview

This first collection, in prose memoir and poetry, of the work of a Navajo poet and teacher describes attending a government school for Indian children and the challenge it presented to her socially, culturally, and expressively. Laura Tohe says this of her experience:

"I was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and raised on the Diné (Navajo) Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. I grew up speaking Diné as my primary language. For a while we lived near Coyote Canyon with my grandparents while my parents operated the Tohe Coal Mine, a family business. After the mine closed, my mother moved us to Crystal, New Mexico, where she worked at the boarding school. I grew up without television in the beautiful Chuska Mountains, where only a dirt road connected us to the rest of the world.

"While growing up I heard stories all around me. As we drove down the dusty reservation road, my mother told many Diné stories. I liked to listen to her and Grandma gossip. Sometimes she would catch me eavesdropping and make me leave. My first publication originates from a story given to my mother by her great-grandmother."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780931122934
Publisher:	West End Press
Publication date:	12/31/1999
Pages:	63
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.25(d)

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Letter to General Pratt	ix
	Prologue: Once You Were Signed Up	xiii
Part I	"Kill the Indian, Save the Man"
	Our Tongues Slapped into Silence	2
	The Names	4
	Cat or Stomp	6
	She's Real Quiet, a Letter from the Indian School I	7
	Joe Babes	8
	The Mane Story	10
	Christianity Hopping	11
	The Sacrament	13
	Popeye's Kitchen, A Letter from the Indian School II	14
	Woolworths	15
	Sometimes Those Pueblo Men Can Sure Be Coyotes	16
	Mennen Skin Bracer	18
	Dancing Boots	20
	Visiting Cabbage Ears, A Letter from the Indian School III	22
	Covert Lover or How My Naa'ashood Days Ended	23
	So I Blow Smoke in Her Face	25
	Collage	30
Part II	No Parole Today
	Conversations in passing	32
	My Brother Shakes the Bottle	34
	Body Identified	35
	Newspaper Deaths	36
	The Shooting	37
	No Parole Today	38
	Sometimes She Dreams	39
	Little Sister	40
	Half-Light	41
	Oil	42
	When the Moon Died	43
	Easter Sunday	45
	At Mexican Springs	47

What People are Saying About This

Joseph Bruchac

I know of no other book that deals more directly with the Indian School experience or does it better. Tohe mourns the losses, yet never loses herself in bitterness...this [is] a minor classic that should be in every library.

Editorial Reviews

"No Parole Today" is poetry from the heartpoetry that reveals Tohes inner self. . . . Her work reveals a deep, intense pain in the heart and an unnecessary hurt caused by the greed of trespassers.

"No Parole Today is poetry from the heart—poetry that reveals Tohe's inner self. . . . Her work reveals a deep, intense pain in the heart and an unnecessary hurt caused by the greed of trespassers."

From the Publisher