Recensori in anteprimaBarbara Robidoux

Under the inspired curation of Ariel Gore, Santa Fe joins Phoenix as a riveting Southwest US installment in the Akashic Noir Series. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Byron F. Aspaas, Barbara Robidoux, Elizabeth Lee, Ana June, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, Ariel Gore, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Candace Walsh, Hida Viloria, Cornelia Read, Miriam Sagan, James Reich, Kevin Atkinson, Katie Johnson, and Tomas Moniz. From the introduction by Ariel Gore: The stories in this collection reflect a fundamental truth about this city: history depends on who’s telling it. Too often the story of Santa Fe has been told only by the conquerors and the tourism PR firms. In Santa Fe Noir, you will hear the voices of the others: locals and Native people, unemployed veterans and queer transplants, the homeless and the paroled-to-here. When I asked the contributors you’ll read in these pages if they had a Santa Fe story to tell, they invariably shrugged and said something to the effect of, “Oh, I’ve got a story all right. But it might not fit the image of Santa Fe you’re looking for.” I said, “Try me.” They came back with the stories that never make the glossy tour brochures: the working class and the underground, the decolonized and the ever-haunted; the Santa Fe only we know. Conquered and reconquered, colonized and commodified, Santa Fe understands—from historical genocide to the murders of family members—the intimacy of violence.

Blue Hand Books Collective, a small Native American-owned publishing company based in New England, has announced its first title of 2016 is Sweetgrass Burning: Stories from The Rez. This debut narrative fiction by Barbara Robidoux comprises linked short stories about the lives of Indians who live at Northpoint, a fictional reservation in northeastern Maine. Robidoux, who’s lived in Maine on the Passamaquoddy reservation (rez), has Eastern Cherokee (Tsalagi), Italian and Scottish ancestry. “Robidoux’s book covers the everyday events that confront this (rez) community and its struggles against corporate interests to take over tribal land for profit, the opening and rapid closing of a tribal Bingo hall, and the revenge of three elder ladies who cast their humor and rage against prejudiced neighbors in a non-Indian town which borders the rez,” said Trace Hentz, founder of the Blue Hand Books Collective. “Her characters open their hearts and tell us sometimes angry and often humorous stories about what it takes to stand by their culture and language in the face of state and federal government pressure to assimilate. “We’re honored that Barbara Robidoux chose to work with us. You’ll get wrapped up in her characters but even more wrapped up in the plot.”