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The Book of Bearings puts the puzzle pieces of the New World together without a picture on the puzzle box. The characters struggle to situate themselves between what they were and what they are supposed to become. The poems include voices from the mid-nineteenth-century Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and the mid-twentieth-century Eskimo experience in Alaska, as well as personal narratives. This book addresses the Native American process of assimilation from first contact through education in the civilized world. It is a view of that world from the eyes of those who were seen as the conquered.
The Book of Bearings seeks its bearing in a shifting world. Often it focuses on the effects of Christianity. The characters use the new language to frame their various experiences. They use language as a tool for understanding what cannot fully be understood, which, for the believer, is the transformation in Christ when he left the world charged with his light.
About the author
Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her 2014-17 books are Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, Report to the Department of the Interior, One of Us, Ironic Witness, Uprising of Goats, The Collector of Bodies: Concern for Syria and the Middle East, and QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM: The Keyboard Letters. Among her awards: two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Minnesota Book Award, an American Book Award and Willa Award from Women Writers of the West.
