Roofwalker

Author's Bio:

Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe (Yanktonnai Dakota). Born in Chicago, she earned a BA from Harvard College, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, and Voice Literary Supplement, among other publications. She teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Quotes:

"We are extraordinarily lucky to have this new collection of Susan Power's inimitable writings: gorgeous, deeply imagined, and breathtaking in their wisdom. The short stories are rich in tragedy and fury, joy and surprise, clarity and piercing honesty. The personal histories offer us a fascinating glimpse into Power's remarkable bicultural heritage as well as a reflection on the interplay between her writing and her life.”—Lan Samantha Chang, author of Hunger

"Susan Power understands how historic truth threads the maze of the imagination. Roofwalker is a book of wild humor and compassion”—Louise Erdrich

“Her voice is authentic and lyrical and, perhaps most admirably for writing of its kind, it is also restrained. . . . It is also to Power's credit that she does not seek to represent Indian reality as a perfect past ruined only by the arrival of whites—that she allows the culture its flaws, the people their sins.”—Chicago Tribune

“A masterful storyteller, Susan Power . . . combines fiction and nonfiction to honor the spirits of both imaginary and real figures who live mostly away from the reservation yet palpably feel its influence and see its ghosts in their daily lives.”—The Chuckanut Reader
 

“The stories and essays in Roofwalker portray women and men negotiating an impossible path between Native American culture and a transplanted urban life in Chicago. Susan Power, awarded the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for the 1994 novel The Grass Dancer, is a product of such extremes, and her experience dominates this masterly mix of fiction and non-fiction.”—Chicago Sun Times

“The fiction and essays here feel inextricably linked, not forced together; among the things they share is Power's inventive, clear-eyed prose.”—New York Times Book Review

“Part fiction, part autobiography, these stories show what it's like to live between two worlds. . . . This collection of moving, well-written tales is recommended for literary fiction collections.”—Library Journal

“In Roofwalker, Power writes with stunning clarity and grace, creating a mesmerizing landscape of characters in a series of short pieces. . . . A masterful blending of memory and imagination.”—Birchbark Review

“In the title story from this collection, the Roofwalker is a spirit that eats dreams, and when he finds one he really likes he makes them come true. A young girl in Chicago learns about the Roofwalker from her visiting Dakota grandmother. Her father has left the family and her mother is struggling. The grandmother comes to ground the young girl and to remind her of her place in this world. The intergenerational pattern of learning and transmitting cultural knowledge from traditional homelands to urban settings is repeated in a number of variations in these splendid narratives. Power (Standing Rock Yanktonnai Dakota) has woven these 12 stories together with wonderfully lyric language and contemporary experience informed by Sioux culture and history. The narratives have common threads and images such as abandonment, birthing, storytelling, beading, spirits, recovery and survival. Power intertwines poetry and letters with exquisite prose. She introduces political issues, even tragedy, with humor and grace."—Multicultural Review

“Roofwalker . . . displays the steady hand of a skilled writer with a lot on her mind. . . . Her well-honed, clear prose reflects her considerable skill. Power capably evokes an atmosphere saturated with meditative, quiet tension." —Tim Carnahan, MN Artists