All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.

What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

What if someone picks on me?" I asked Then I'll pick on them". What if someone picks my nose?" I asked. The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said.

she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

I got in a fight with my girlfriend," I said. "I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?" Well, you should be more careful where you drive," the officer said. "You're making people nervous. You don't fit the profile of the neighborhood." I wanted to tell him that I didn't fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.