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Pushing the Bear

di Diane Glancy

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1432189,831 (3.77)2
Fiction. Literature. In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tragic story of the Cherokee removal. Amid wrenching scenes of hardship and pain, there is the underlying strength that ultimately allowed this ancient people to endure. Diane Glancy has received many awards for her writing, including the American Book Award and the Pushcart Prize. Her luminous, poetic prose and memorable characters take on added life with this multi-voice performance by talented narrators. An interview with the author is at the conclusion of this audiobook.… (altro)
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A multiple narrator approach is used in this novel that follows a group of family and neighbors during the Cherokee Removal. The title, and a major theme, is taken from the myth of the bear, ᏲᎾ. The legend goes that a young boy began spending all his time in the woods, his body growing long fur, never even coming home to eat. He told his family that they should leave the settlement of the Cherokee people and live in the woods, where there is plenty of food and no need to work. His entire clan decided to follow him despite the other clans pleading with them to remain, and thus bears came into existence.

Glancy interprets this legend as illustrating the greed and self-centeredness that all people are capable of. It is these motivations that led the white citizens of Georgia and surrounding states, working through their governments, to force the Cherokee from their homes onto a long winter journey that would kill a quarter of them. The novel shows all that horror in action.

Is it unfair to show that in the midst of this great injustice that people on the receiving end might also act out of the exact same motivations, only with far less coercive power available to them? The two primary characters, Maritole and Knobowtee, are a husband and wife who cause each other great hurt over these months on the trail, each seeming to be metaphorically devoured by their “inner bear”. This is made very clear with Maritole, who dreams of and has hallucinations of being clawed and eaten by a bear. On an intermediate level, between that of the US Government/Cherokee relationship and a marriage relationship, relations between the Tennessee Cherokee and the Georgia Cherokee and the North Carolina Cherokee also show these motivations at work.

The title thus refers both to large, public wrongs like Cherokee Removal, and the small private wrongs that each of us might commit no matter where we find ourselves situated on the larger public matters. To push the bear, to fight against the bear, is a battle for everyone, however much power they have or do not have.

Such a battle naturally has religious connotations. The Cherokee on the trail are divided between the old ways of belief and Christianity. Cherokee medicine men argue with Cherokee clergy as each try to relieve the sufferings of the people. Cherokee wonder how those who follow the teachings of Jesus can be responsible for such great suffering, or at best just stand and watch as the detachments pass their towns. Jesus himself might wonder, but not be all that surprised, as one woman suggests:
“Jesus knew all his life he would push the bear because of us,’ I told Maritole as we walked. ‘The claws piercing his head like thorns. His feet and hands nailed with claws. The darkness licked his fur up and down when he was on the cross. Yet he was the man ᏥᏌ ᎦᎶᏁᏛ who pushed the bear.”


One downside to this novel for me is the fractured multiple narrator construction. Perspective regularly shifts once or more per page. Distinctiveness of narrative voice is I think an issue.

By coincidence I finished the novel the day before the annual Remember the Removal bike ride begins in New Echota, Georgia, in which Cherokee youth ride almost 1,000 miles over one of the trails walked during the Removal.
(https://rtr.cherokee.org/about-the-ride)

3.5/5 ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
What I loved about this book was finishing it and being free to go on to my next book. I came close to giving this 1 star but I just couldn’t because I loved the map on the inside covers and the maps that are at the front of each chapter, showing the route as the Cherokee progressed, and I like that the Cherokee language is used at times throughout the book.

I’m very interested in the Trail of Tears but I might have preferred a non-fiction book or at the least a much better novel. I will not be reading the sequel, Pushing the Bear: After the Trail of Tears. If not for my real world book club I would have taken a look at the information about the Cherokee oral/written language and then abandoned the book; there HAVE to be better books about this subject out there.

Reading this was a slog. It was tedious when it shouldn’t be and I just couldn’t care that much about the characters when I should have. Sometimes I mildly enjoyed this as I was reading but I never got lost in the book.

I often like books such as this, with alternating narrators, but here some of the narrators seem to be there just to give the reader the history and background information about the removal. While I’m interested in the history and was glad to learn more about it, it’s didn’t make for a scintillating novel. The book is written in short little sections so it’s way too easy to put down the book, sometimes a helpful thing, but for me I’m not so sure it was with this particular book. The account felt very jerky; there was no good flow to the story.

I got really irritated when the conflict between the Cherokee and the European whites was presented as too evenly at fault. Yes, it was good to see sympathetic white European soldiers and not perfect Cherokee, but nope, the forced removal wouldn’t have happened without the whites coveting the Cherokee’s land. The Cherokee lived in cabins, had possessions, and were farmers, not at all nomadic by that time. Sorry, not evenly at fault at all. Not even close!

I did learn a lot. The Trail of Tears was much different than I’d envisioned. Many things struck me, including the fact that the Native Americans forced from their farms were also forced to pay landowners/farmers for passage over their lands. We American immigrants have a crazy history, which I suppose it just part of the overall crazy human history.

So, I’m glad I’m done and delighted to move on. I would like to read an excellent book or more, fiction and/or non-fiction, about The Trail of Tears. If any Goodreads’ members can recommend any, I’d appreciate it. I can’t recommend this book to anyone, but I’m curious about what my other seven book club members will say about this book. ( )
1 vota Lisa2013 | Apr 17, 2013 |
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Fiction. Literature. In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tragic story of the Cherokee removal. Amid wrenching scenes of hardship and pain, there is the underlying strength that ultimately allowed this ancient people to endure. Diane Glancy has received many awards for her writing, including the American Book Award and the Pushcart Prize. Her luminous, poetic prose and memorable characters take on added life with this multi-voice performance by talented narrators. An interview with the author is at the conclusion of this audiobook.

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