i want to hear what's happened to you," she said evenly after a while. she gestured in the direction, down river, of the butcher shop. "it's just that there is nowhere else to start," she said gently. "niether of us is the same. but i'm different because of small, good, manageable things. you're different because ... things i don't know.

It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.

I am part of what she thinks is her illness, a symptom of which she thinks she has been cured. She, on the other hand, is what I was looking for.

I had a very free childhood and ranged around on my bicycle the way boys do. I had few restrictions.

Sometimes a person's monstrosity seems superhuman.

This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.

Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don't know how strong until we're pushing out our babies.