I cannot tell a lie. The books I use and read most are at home in an entire other set of bookshelves 🙂 In many ways, the books in this picture are like a look through the intellectual history of my life. I wrote my dissertation on images of the 1890 Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee massacre in Native American literature, and there’s a shelf in my office dedicated to Black Elk and Wovoka and documentary and oral histories of the turn of the century. Above that is a shelf of Sherman Alexie and Susan Power and Blake Houseman, Indigenous writers whose books I often teach. And above those books are where my love lies — in the writing of queer Indigenous writers and Native and non-Native theorists/scholars who work in queer Indigenous studies — the fantasy novels of Daniel Heath Justice, the poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill, the detective fiction of Carole laFavor, the theory of Scott Morgensen. These words have changed my life and the lives of so many students I’ve shared them with. A quick glance, then, at this shelfie shows the names and spines of so many texts in bright colors and catchy fonts, but in each is a story of who I was. And who I am. And who I hope to become.
— Lisa Tatonetti, Professor, 25 January 2018
K-State English 