Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival / Edition 1

by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Overview

Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is Allison Adelle Hedge Coke's searching account of her life as a mixed-blood woman coming of age off reservation, yet deeply immersed in her Huron, Metis, and Cherokee heritage. In a style at once elliptical and achingly clear, Hedge Coke details her mother's schizophrenia; the domestic and community abuse overshadowing her childhood; and torments both visited upon her--(rape and violence) and inflicted on herself (alcohol and drug abuse during her youth). Yet she managed to survive with her dreams and her will, her sense of wonder and promise undiminished.

The title Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer refers to life-revelations guiding the award-winning poet and writer through her many trials, as well as her labors in tobacco fields, factories, construction, and fishing; her motherhood; her involvement with music and performance; and the melding of language and experience that brought order to her life. Hedge Coke shares insights gathered along the way, insights touching on broader Native issues such as modern life in the diaspora; lack of a national eco-ethos; the threat of alcohol, drug abuse, and violence; and the ongoing onslaught on self amid a complex, mixed heritage.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Oklahoma, is a Great Plains Fellow at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is the author of The Year of the Rat, Dog Road Woman (winner of the American Book Award), Off-Season City Pipe, and Blood Run, and she most recently edited Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas and Effigies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803215276
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	05/01/2004
Series:	American Indian Lives
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Oklahoma, is a Great Plains Fellow at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is the author of The Year of the Rat, Dog Road Woman (winner of the American Book Award), Off-Season City Pipe, and Blood Run, and she most recently edited Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas and Effigies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Of Seeds
2. From Winds
3. When Fire and Water Meet
4. Ashes
5. Back to the Lands
6. Oceans, Rivers
7. Crossings

What People are Saying About This

Joy Harjo

In this memoir Allison Hedge Coke shows how 'story was part of everything' in her troubled childhood and in the adult world she came to write into poetry. Hers was also a 'childhood forged schizophrenically.' But the molten terror of a girl ringed round with her mother's imagined demons hardens into a shining imagination. Hedge Coke's love of land and people rings out as hard as steel and as true."-Heid E. Erdrich, coeditor of Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community and author of Fishing for Myth. "What I've always admired about Allison Hedge Coke's poetry is her astounding courage. And the ability to seamlessly weave the tobacco fields of childhood with the stark plains and hills of South Dakota. And more than all that-the shining spirit of compassion.
—Mvskoke poet and musician

Simon J. Ortiz

Telling is one thing. That's what we do when we tell stories. But coming to know by experience and telling about it is another. Allison Hedge Coke in Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer shows us 'knowing' in her unique and wonderful way.
—author of Out There Somewhere

Editorial Reviews

“An extraordinary story of survival, compassion, courage, and a balanced comprehension of acceptance and the will to live.”—Maggie Necefer, Multicultural Review

Multicultural Review - Maggie Necefer

“[A] beautifully written, courageous memoir.”—Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

“Allison Hedge Coke’s intimate narrative details her journey through suffering to wholeness. Her story will inspire anyone who has faced adversity. . . .[Hedge Coke’s] insight is luminous.”—Great Plains Quarterly

Great Plains Quarterly

“It is through her lush yet controlled use of language that Hedge Coke successfully creates a narrative of both personal and cultural history. . . . She is often unflinchingly succinct in her telling of some painful event, and other times, especially when describing moments when she is close to death, she offers us lyric gems. . . . She travels like a liminal being, moving fluidly across boundaries between prose and poetry, dream and reality, myth and history, animal and human, the personal and political.”—Mira Bartok, Fourth Genre

Fourth Genre

“Hedge Coke’s childhood and young adult years as recounted in this gritty and courageous memoir are not only a story of survival but a story of strength.”—Campbell Editorial.com

Campbell Editorial.com

“Telling is one thing. That’s what we do when we tell stories. But coming to know by experience and telling about it is another. Allison Hedge Coke in Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer shows us ‘knowing’ in her unique and wonderful way.”—Simon J. Ortiz, author of Out There Somewhere

Simon J. Ortiz

This book has the ability to open eyes, and to provide freedom on a deep and pesonal level through the glory of truth, which is a beautiful thing no matter how shocking its origins. Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is one read that you will not forget.”—Diane Zephier, Quiet Mountain Essays

Quiet Mountain Essays - Diane Zephier

What I’ve always admired about Allison Hedge Coke’s poetry is her astounding courage. And the ability to seamlessly weave the tobacco fields of childhood with the stark plains and hills of South Dakota. And more than all that—the shining spirit of compassion.”—Joy Harjo, Mvskoke poet and musician

Joy Harjo

Razor-sharp. . . . [Hedge Coke’s] award-winning skills as a poet bring another element of sharpness to her book—crisp sentences full of detail. Her carefully chosen words are like snapshots in their ability to capture her struggle just to remain alive and, later, her journey to a place of peace. . . . It’s a journey that slashes at reader’s emotions but also celebrates the ability of the human spirit to battle on and the power of the author to let us share the road with her.”—Chris Rubich, Billings Gazette
 
 

Billings Gazette - Chris Rubich

"This is a harrowing book. Statistics about alcoholism and family violence among dispossessed American Indians fail to show the sheer human suffering it causes and the personal heroism of those who struggle through to an integrated life. Hedge Coke was endowed by her Cherokee father with insights into the Indian way of life, but the pressures of prejudice and her mother's insanity drove her into years of drug and alcohol abuse as well as into abusive relationships. She writes in a stately, unashamed manner of beatings and binges, always connecting her personal sufferings to the larger questions of how Indian people can reclaim their cultural and personal pride and authority."—Booklist

Booklist

“An extraordinary story of survival, compassion, courage, and a balanced comprehension of acceptance and the will to live.”—Maggie Necefer, Multicultural Review

— Maggie Necefer

Multicultural Review

"This book has the ability to open eyes, and to provide freedom on a deep and pesonal level through the glory of truth, which is a beautiful thing no matter how shocking its origins. Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is one read that you will not forget."—Diane Zephier, Quiet Mountain Essays

— Diane Zephier

Quiet Mountain Essays

"Razor-sharp."—Chris Rubich, Billings Gazette

— Chris Rubich

Billings Gazette