Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Kirkus Reviews

Miranda (English/Washington and Lee Univ.; The Zen of La Llorona, 2005, etc.) blends narrative, poetry, photos, anthropological recordings and more into a mosaic of memory of her own life and that of her people, the California Indians. "The arc of leather, sharp edges of cured hide, instrument of punishment coming from two hundred years out of the past," writes the author about yet another beating of her brother by her violent, alcoholic father. She ties this personal violence to the historical violence of the padres of the California missions, who, through beatings, torture, rape and enslavement, decimated and broke the California Indians. Miranda rails against turning this saga into a "Mission Fantasy Fairy Tale," and through history, contemporary accounts and newspaper clippings, she reveals the brutality behind the myth. And what of the legacy of this brutality? Was her father, from whom she inherited her Indian blood, blindingly violent as the only way he knew how to survive? To survive the padres' past, need the victims become destroyers? Neglected, abandoned, terrorized, raped (by a neighbor) as a child, Miranda slowly found her way through writing and through the work and hope that the surviving California Indians might rebuild in creative new ways their lost lives. This is not a linear narrative; present and past weave together, historical account leaves off for poetry and lyrical fantasy, the personal and political collide. This is confusing at times and does not always work, but such weakness is overcome by the bold beauty of Miranda's words. A searing indictment of the ravages of the past and a hopeful look at the courage to confront and overcome them.

Kirkus Reviews

A searing indictment of the ravages of the past and a hopeful look at the courage to confront and overcome them.

American Indians in Children's Literature

Some childhood memories, some faded photographs, some snippets of stories written down word for word by an anthropologist, some paragraphs from old textbooks. A lesser author might have crafted a novel spanning the generations, a linear novel, maybe a chapter for each character. But Deborah didn’t and wouldn’t do that; it would have dishonored her ancestors. Rather, she looks at what is—the pieces, the shards of a broken mirror—and interprets, imagines, wonders.

Quarterly West Review

For those suspicious of memoir's lofty goal to capture and contain memories, Bad Indians is a relief. Deborah A. Miranda’s mosaic of short essays, poetry, personal explorations, oral histories, tales, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, and photos (to name a few!) seeks to gather the stories of a people’s past while respecting the elusive nature of chronicling generations. This is not your ordinary memoir.

Leslie Marmon Silko

Essential for all of us who were taught in school that the ‘Mission Indians’ no longer existed in California, Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians is a fascinating book that combines tribal histories, family histories, family tape recordings, and the writings of a white ethnologist who spoke with Miranda’s family, together with photographs, old reports from the mission priests to their bishops, and newspaper articles concerning Indians from the nearby white settlements.

Linda Hogan

For so long, Native writers and readers open books of our tribal history, archaeology, or anthropology and find that it is not the story we know. It does not include the people we know. It does not tell the stories of the heart or the relationships that were, and are, significant in any time...From the voice of the silenced, the written about and not written by, this book is groundbreaking not only as literature but as history