Book Review: Bowman's Store, A Journey to Myself by Joseph Bruchac

I'm a reading monster! I have to get my fun reading done in the next week, before my library class starts.

Bowman's Store is Abenaki author/storyteller Joseph Bruchac's memoir of his childhood. Bruchac is well know among educators for having collected Native American stories in an excellent series of books, Keepers of the Earth, Keepers of the Animals and Keepers of the Night, as well as many other works of fiction and nonfiction.

Some readers may remember a book from a number of years back, The Education of Little Tree. It became a bestseller and purported to be the author's memoir of growing up with his Cherokee grandparents. It later caused a stir in literary circles when, not only was much of it revealed to be a work of fiction, but the author, Forrest Carter, was alleged to be something of a white supremacist.

Bowman's Store is the real thing. Joseph Bruchac grew up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state, reared by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother had defied her parents' wishes, to marry their dark-skinned "French Canadian" hired hand, Jesse Bowman. They had a daughter, and when she married an abusive man, they agreed to raise little Joseph (or Sonny) in their home. What they kept secret from Sonny, indeed what seemed to be a regional secret, was that the people called "French Canadians" were really Abenaki Indians, New England's First People. As a people, many of them denied their culture as a self-preservation technique through years of systematic prejudice and persecution.

Bruchac grew up in what was, by his account, an incredibly loving home. His grandparents ran a small store and gas station. Their economic situation was always marginal, in part because his grandfather had a deep-seated belief that you share what you have with others less fortunate. From his grandfather, who was essentially functionally illiterate, he also learned to "read" and love the natural world. He was an awkward, bookish child, but his grandmother constantly reassured him that his time would come. It wasn't until he was in college in the sixties that Bruchac started to piece together, and then embrace, his Abenaki heritage.

The blurb on the dust jacket of Bowman's Store calls it "compelling, lyrical, and deeply moving", and I agree. This is very much a love story to Bruchac's grandparents, especially his grandfather Jesse Bowman, in which he gives him back his Indian identity. Lovely reading.

(Cross-posted at Winter Reading Challenge)