Bad Indians

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir is a mixed-genre book by Deborah Miranda published by Heyday Books in 2012.

The book is part tribal history of the California Mission Indians as well as a memoir of the author's family's experiences.^[1] It combines oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, poems, and personal reflection to tell the stories of Miranda's Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family along with the experiences of California Indians during the Spanish missions and into the present.^[2] Following a mostly chronological order, the book begins in 1770 with the Spanish building a string of missions along the California coast^[1] and moves forward through time. Through a mission project and edits done to pages of a coloring book, Miranda discusses the teaching of California Missions in schools and American history. She also pulls from her mother's extensive genealogy records and her grandfather's cassette tapes^[1] in order to tell the stories of her own family. The book spans decades, drawing connections between the violence shown to the Mission Indians and the personal abuse Miranda experienced in her life.^[3]

Since its release the book has received favorable reviews from Booklist and Native American author Linda Hogan,^[2] among others. Kirkus Reviews called it, "A searing indictment of the ravages of the past and a hopeful look at the courage to confront and overcome them."^[3] For the book Miranda won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal for the Autobiography/Memoir category.^[4] Additionally, she won a 2015 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award^[5] and was shortlisted for the 2014 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.^[2]

References