WHEREAS Layli Long Soldier is an English-language poetry collection that delves deeply into the relationship between the United States and Indigenous peoples. This book is intended for readers who want to engage in a substantive exploration of Native American history and identity.
In WHEREAS, Layli Long Soldier powerfully and innovatively confronts the language used by the U.S. government in official texts, such as treaties and apologies. With a varied mix of short poems, prose poems, and narrative pieces, she examines histories, landscapes, and her own place within national contexts. This collection received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and is praised as one of the best poetry collections of our time.
This impressive debut is an important addition to contemporary Native American literature and offers a moving, poetic view of identity, language, and history surrounding Layli Long Soldier.
Topics: Poetry / poems by individual poets, Indigenous peoples / indigeneity, POETRY / Native American.