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Summary
Summary
"The grave we dug for my brother Little remained empty even after we filled it back in. And nobody was going to admit it. So begins Little, first published by Graywolf Press in 1995 when David Treuer was just twenty-four. The narrative unfolds to reveal the deeply entwined stories of the three generations of Littles family, including Stan, a veteran of the Vietnam War who believes Little is his son; Duke and Ellis, the twins who built the first house in Poverty after losing their community to smallpox and influenza; Jeannette, the matriarch who loved both Duke and Ellis and who walked hundreds of miles to reunite with them. Each of these characters carries a piece of the mystery of Littles short life. With rhythmic and unadorned prose, Treuer uncovers in even the most frost-hardened ground the resilience and humor of life in Poverty. From the unbearable cruelty of the institutions that systematically unraveled Native communities at the turn of the century, to the hard and hallow emptiness of a childs grave, Treuer has orchestrated a moving account of kinship and survival. In his new introduction, Treuer, now among the foremost writers of his generation, reflects on the germ of this novel and how it fits into his lasting body of work centered on Native life. More than a quarter of a century later, Little proves as vital and moving as ever"--
Author Notes
David Treuer grew up on an Ojibwe reservation in Northern Minnesota. A graduate of Princeton University, he lives in Bemidji, Minnesota
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At once bleak and lushly lyrical, this ambitious first novel by an Ojibwe writer probes the lives of the residents of a Minnesota reservation they call, with weary sardonicism, Poverty. A priest has died, drowned, it seems, in the baptismal font, but the truth turns out to be darker and more vengeful, an emblem of the unhappy collision of white and Indian cultures. Yet the resolution of this mystery is subordinate to the unfolding of lyrical and elegiac set pieces that illuminate the lives of Duke and Ellis, twins whose coming of age is comprised of acts of great compassion and of matter-of-fact brutality; of Jeanette, sliding into embittered middle age; and of Little, the doomed child whose one word of speech``You''can both embrace and accuse. Treuer, who himself lives on a reservation in Minnesota, moves awkwardly from one character to another; his greater gift is a poetic clarity of observation, in which even the bloody death of a deer can be a thing of austere beauty. Author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Treuer's debut novel tells of three generations in a family attempting to eke out a living on a Minnesota reservation called Poverty. A bleak, barren landscape, stripped of its once fertile pine forest, serves as the setting for this forlorn tale of desperation, abandonment, familial secrets, and oppressive poverty. The story is told through the voices of people who have in one way or another ended up in Poverty, including Duke and Ellis (twins who live in their car), an abandoned child, a priest who drowns in a baptismal font, and Little, a boy whose only word is you. Treuer has fashioned a moody story with fascinating characters and an ever-evolving plot that highlights the absurd disparities between the rich and the poor. --Kathleen Hughes
Choice Review
Treuer attempts to evoke the atmosphere and landscape of the Midwest; however, he is only partially successful. The history of the deforestation of northern Minnesota and the subsequent separation of the people from the land serve as a backdrop for the grim lives of his characters. Although the historical element is well realized, readers will have trouble engaging the poor and maimed characters of this imaginary reservation. Treuer apparently draws on his personal experience growing up at Leech Lake Reservation to create his portrait of a small community of characters on a Minnesota reservation. Their lives and thoughts are unrelentingly morose. A sense of emptiness pervades their existence and Treuer's description of it. Against this, Treuer goes for a number of big images with a surprise murder and inexplicable suicide, but the combination of history, character, and plot lacks vision. Treuer explores much the same territory as Louise Erdrich, but Little has little of her humor and none of her far-reaching vision. This book may be of some interest to general readers and upper-division undergraduates who are mapping the experiences of Natives and non-Natives living in the Midwest. J. Ruppert; University of Alaska Fairbanks
Kirkus Review
An Ojibwe writer from northern Minnesota's Leech Lake Reservation debuts with a sad but graceful tale of seven people living in a crumbling housing tract called Poverty. The first 25 or so pages--on the desecration of the Mississippi River and the people's land--may be some of the most depressing ever written, and it takes a little effort to wade through them. It's worth it, though, as the novel then unfolds with delicate human insight and engaging drama. ""Poverty"" is the Kennedy-era housing tract in the corner of the Minnesota reservation. The tract is in a forested area where, long ago, twins Duke and Ellis built a cabin with their pregnant teenage girlfriend, Jeannette. Now in their 70s, Duke and Ellis live in a Pontiac Catalina parked outside the house where Jeannette lives with daughter Celia and Celia's boyfriend, Stan, a Vietnam vet. Also in the house is the six-fingered and mostly silent Little, Celia's son (the father's identity is one of the central dramas here), as well as Donovan, whom the twins found half-frozen in a car crashed nearby. In Poverty's second house live Stan's sister Violet--their father is in prison, their mother fled the reservation long ago--and her daughter, Jackie. The unique bonds these people have to each other are revealed as each character tells his or her story: Stan recounts the night in Vietnam when his best friend was killed; Jeannette her tale of being taken to Iowa as a young girl to serve as maid servant to two elderly white women; and Donovan reveals how Little, brimming with excitement, climbed above Poverty and to his death. This clan forms an odd but tightly knit unit that faces numerous deaths, rapes--of people and of their land--and other hardships, transcending them all. They claim Poverty, and poverty, as theirs, transforming it into a place of beauty that perhaps only they can recognize. A splendid debut that promises great things to come. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
An empty coffin is lowered into a grave behind a half-abandoned housing project called Poverty on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota. The burial ceremony is for an enigmatic eight-year-old boy named Little, whose entire vocabulary consists of the word you. First novelist Treuer reconstructs Little's biography by allowing Poverty's inhabitants to tell their own life stories in a mosaic of first-person narratives. In the process, we learn the history of Poverty itself, from the turn of the century to the present. Land that was once virgin pine forest has been ruthlessly logged and tilled until it is now a barren, windswept waste, littered with the skeletons of rusting farm machinery. The town's population has been similarly devastated by poverty, alcoholism, and the Vietnam War. Treuer's portrait of a downtrodden people unfolds in slow, carefully measured prose, packed with descriptive detail. An ambitious first novel about America's rural poor; recommended for all larger fiction collections.Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
