Come on down to Auntie’s for an intriguing evening with Tiffany Midge and Devon Mihesuah as they entertain us with indigenous spooky myths and horror. If you liked “Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology” by Shane Hawk, you should come to this event!
Tuesday, October 29th at 7pm at Auntie’s Bookstore
(402 W Main Ave)
This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP at the event link.
About “Horns”
Winner of the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Book Prize.
Tiffany Midge’s Horns is a comedic romp and a razor-edged burlesque, with seriousness in its bones. Midge’s cast of characters, drawn from pop culture, history, and literature in equal measure, is epic, from the Maiden on the Land O’Lakes Butter Box to Martha Stewart to Corpse Bride, the Girl Scouts of America to Satan himself. Her structures are as abundant as her performers. There are lists, outlines, contemporary ghazals and sonnets, interviews, statistical round-ups, and marriage vows. There’s nuance, too, and spot-on moments of lyricism: “Her dresses, hung in the closet like sides of beef,” she writes in one poem. And at the end of “Matrimonial Vows for Cannibals: ” “I will savor your brain for last, that soft, sweet rind, / your edible, desirable, loveable mind.” True to its title, Horns is sharp, dangerous, and melodic, a collection that resonates with joyous critique.
-Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets
About the author
Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and was raised in the Pacific Northwest. She is a former columnist for Indian Country Today and taught writing and composition for Northwest Indian College. Midge’s award-winning books include The Woman Who Married a Bear and Outlaws, Renegades, and Saints: Diary of a Mixed-Up Halfbreed. She resides in Moscow, Idaho, where she has served as the city’s poet laureate. Geary Hobson is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of numerous books, including The Last of the Ofos.
About “The Bone Picker”
Under the shadow of gray clouds, three children venture into the woods, where they spot the corpse of an old man on a scaffold. Suddenly a wild figure emerges, with long fingernails and tangled hair. It is the Hattak fullih nipi foni, the bone picker, who comes to tear off rotting flesh with his fingernails. Only the Choctaws who adhere to the old ways will speak of him.
The frightening bone picker is just one of many entities, scary and mysterious, who lurk behind every page of this spine-tingling collection of Native fiction, written by award-winning Choctaw author Devon A. Mihesuah. Choctaw lore features a large pantheon of deities. These beings created the first people, taught them how to hunt, and warned them of impending danger. Their stories are not meant simply to entertain: each entity has a purpose in its behavior and a lesson to share-to those who take heed.
As a Choctaw citizen, with deep ties to Indian Territory and Oklahoma, Mihesuah grew up hearing the stories of her ancestors. In the tradition of Native storytelling, she spins tales that move back and forth fluidly across time. The ancient beings, we discover, followed the tribe from their original homelands in Mississippi and are now ever-present influences on tribal consciousness.
While some of the horrors told here are “real life” in nature, the art of fiction that Mihesuah employs reveals surprising outcomes or alternative histories. It turns out the things that scare us the most can lead to the answers we are seeking and even ensure our very survival.
About “The Hatak Witches: Volume 88 (Sun Tracks)”
After a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building.
Monique discovers that a portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton had also been stolen from the neglected museum archives. Her uncle, the spiritual leader Leroy Bear Red Ears, concludes that the stolen remains are those of Hatak haksi, a witch and the matriarch of the Crow family, a group of shape-shifting Choctaws who plan to reestablish themselves as the powerful creatures they were when the tribe lived in Mississippi. Monique, Leroy, and Chris must stop the Crows, but to their dread, the entities have retreated to the dark and treacherous hollow in the center of Chalakwa Ranch. The murderous shape-shifters believe the enormous wild hogs, poisonous snakes, and other creatures of the hollow might form an adequate defense for Hatak haksi.
But what no one counts on is the unexpected appearance and power of the Old Ones who guard the lands of the Choctaw afterlife. Blending tribal beliefs and myths into a modern context, The Hatak Witches continues the storyline of Choctaw cosmology and cultural survival that are prominent in Devon A. Mihesuah’s award-winning novel, The Roads of My Relations.
About the author
Devon A. Mihesuah, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in the Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. A historian by training, Mihesuah is the former editor of American Indian Quarterly and the author of over a dozen award-winning books on Indigenous history and current issues, as well as novels.
