Cover Reveal for Debut Novel: CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE
I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I think it was back in May 2021 when my editor, Kathy Pories, introduced me to the Creative Director of Algonquin Books, Christopher Moisan. We began discussions about who to approach for the cover art. Christopher found an amazing artist in El Paso, Texas and sent us some examples of her work. Both Kathy and I were floored. We passed the images along to my agent, Allie Levick, of Writers House, and she too instantly became enamored by her work. It's my great pleasure to introduce you to: Christin Apodaca.
Like Christopher, we were all impressed with the three dimensional quality of her work. There was something captivating with the surrealist style and her black and white images had a way of lifting off the surface. Many of her drawings beckoned to an almost Salvador Dali dynamic, where the unraveling of faces seemed to speak to greater issues in humanity.
Once Christopher gave us the word that he was going to approach her for the cover of CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE, we sat patiently biting our nails and wondering how she would respond. She was sent early chapters of the novel. I couldn't help but wonder: will the novel resonate with her?
A few weeks passed and we were all delighted when she agreed to work with us. I perused through her website and her Instagram and thought about how she would capture the novel. What elements would stand out? How will she see the characters? Where will the cultural elements come into play? With Christopher Moisan's guidance, Christin sent us her preliminary sketch.
And it was perfect!
When you discover Apodaca's work, you're first impressed with how she captures faces and how she can make you think about the images' internal life. But it's a drawing, one side of your mind says. But it's so alive, says the other. There is such a depth that at once you feel like the image is in pain or joyous, like the drawing is a person working through hardships and living out triumphs. You know her, and maybe you've felt her pain, experienced her happiness, and had once lived life like an Apodaca drawing.
All the qualities I had hoped for came out in the image she created for the debut novel. I couldn't have asked for anything better. I spent a weekend in secret, holding onto the sketch like it was a personal joy. Something I knew about that no one else did. Sometimes it feels good to have a private moment with something so powerful, like remembering the magic of childhood--when it was okay to live in dreamlike spaces.
Christin is well respected in her El Paso, Texas community. She has spectacular murals at various locations around the city and holds gallery showings to help her community carry a sense of pride. When I first started the discussions with Kathy and Christopher, I made it clear that I needed to work with an artist who understood the intertribal and multicultural dynamics at play in my novel.
Because the novel plays with the intersections among Kiowa, Cherokee, and Latinx peoples and communities, I was immediately drawn to Apodaca's Mex-Indigenous roots. With more and more Indigenous peoples crossing the U.S./Mexico border every year, we need artists of all varieties to give voice to the voiceless. My novel not only works to highlight the intertribal dynamics of life in Oklahoma, but it also brings a spotlight to the transnational Indigenous identity of North America, aka Turtle Island. Christin's art breaks down imaginary borders, and simultaneously builds bridges of hope.
The Creative Director of Algonquin Books, Christopher Moisan, took Christin's image and started to add color and create background designs. He sent Allie and I a few prototypes and played around with the color scheme and design. He blended the colors on the Gourd Dance sash well, giving enough contrast to effectively capture Christin's line work in the blue and red. The dollar bill stood out more than ever with the deep green. He blended the rich copper brown of the face's skin tone at my request. I was grateful for his flexibility and his wisdom in working with artists. Soon he displayed the fullness of his talent and sent Allie and I the final draft of the cover. It was amazing.
I'm not only excited to share with you an amazing artist, Christin Apodaca, but I'm also humbled to have worked with such a masterful Creative Director, Christopher Moisan. I'm grateful to Michael McKenzie for connecting us all with Marisa Siegel at The Rumpus for an exclusive cover reveal. So be one of the first to see the cover of my debut novel, CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE, by following this link: www.therumpus.net/2021/08/rumpus-exclusive-cover-reveal-for-calling-for-a-blanket-dance/
Native American Cuisine in Kiowa Literary Thematics
Exploring culture through foods is nothing new to the literary world. Likewise, it's not new to Native American literature. While we in the literary field know this to be true there is still very little exploration of the topic in thematic terms. How can traditional food and customs associated with consumption of those foods enhance the greater theme of a piece?Those of you reading this post to learn how to make Native American food may be asking, "What is Native American cuisine?" You'll have to search a little further to find out details on cooking Native American food, but I'll give you a little sample of what may constitute Native American cuisine in this article. For further elaboration on the topic of Native American cuisine check out: Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank. She taught my ethnobotany course at the Institute of American Indian Arts and knows what she's talking about. Plus she's Kiowa so that puts her on my radar. There are a host of other options you can find on Amazon as well. Diabetes is a serious issue among Native peoples so I'm going to link a vital source for healthy eating here: Click Here!Back when I was a young guy "tearing it" on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma meatpies were indicative of KCA culture (Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache). It was a localized food specific to a certain geographic area. Today, using meatpies as a Kiowa artist, it can be applied for generational specificity in that it "was" localized, and now tribes across Oklahoma and other parts of Native America have latched onto it as a "cultural food." Living in Tahlequah today I've found many Cherokees making meatpies, but when I was growing up in Tahlequah as a child meatpies weren't in the community so I would dream of trips back to Lawton, Oklahoma (KCA country) where I could get my hands on a meatpie. Oh, the diaspora!
In my short story, Our Dance, you'll find in the second paragraph of the story the narrator describe receiving his Kiowa per cap, his ahongiah, (which was federally dispersed money where the Kiowa tribe allocated a financial disbursement between all tribal members), as "we both tore into those envelopes faster than the last meatpie on a plate." In the juxtaposition of receiving money alongside a cultural food like meatpies, we deduce the equal desperation in which both were acquired, and how each--meatpie and money--have become an appropriated substance for cultural survival.Meatpies are made from the combination of fry bread and meat. More or less a meat-stuffed piece of fry bread. Fry bread is commonly understood as a cultural food, but it's not traditional, meaning our ancestors didn't make fry bread prior to contact by Western peoples. It became a consistent part of our cultural foods when the U.S. government distributed food rations to tribes (we commonly refer to them as commodities or "commods" for slang). Because meatpies are basically fry bread with meat inside, they have also become a survival food for Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache people in southern Oklahoma (further out now due to diasporic conditions).When the narrator of my story, Our Dance, describes going for money the same as going for "the last meatpie on the plate," it speaks to the creative and critical thinking skills applied by Kiowa people to take something and appropriate it for cultural survival. In essence the story's title, Our Dance, is the dance of survival, like meatpies, like receiving per cap, like bonding with the community. To further connect this thematic for the reader, the quote at the onset of the story by James Auchiah, “Kiowa Five” artist (now Kiowa Six) and Chief Satanta’s grandson, reads, “We Kiowa are old, but we dance.” It is the dance of survival beginning with the narrator's ancestors and carrying into his present community which dictates his use of cultural foods for survival, and subsequently my use of culture, food, and customs to connect the thematic dots for my readers.