Will I love Whiskey Tender?

This unique memoir of neither belonging to her tribe nor to the anglo world in SW US is powerful and impactful. Ipened my eyes, and heart.

The Gen X memoir that I didn’t know I needed.

Most memoirs of Native life describe Native-White relationships. Taffa dives into relationships among Native communities and between Native and Chicanx neighbors and family members in both the Fort Yuma Quechan Reservation and Farmington, New Mexico.

Threaded throughout are the TV shows and diner dinners and dusty hikes and radio soundtracks that almost any New Mexican who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s will remember.

Published last year, Whiskey Tender became a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction—and for good reason.

Taffa manages to weave her child and teen years as a citizen of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation with the historical trauma that still haunts the Desert Southwest. I’m not sure how many Americans are aware that, while perhaps having undergone a facelift, assimilation via boarding schools and governmental programs continue.

Further, the western part of New Mexico is often misunderstood or overlooked, and anybody wanting to tour New Mexico should, at the very least, understand the enormous cultural importance of the… show more.