Sáanii Dahataal/The Women Are Singing

March 15, 1993
Navajo poet and English professor Tapahonso here celebrates the importance of conversation and the spoken word among her people. Driving back and forth between her parents' home in Shiprock, New Mexico, and her current home in Lawrence, Kansas, this gifted writer recalls snatches of family memories and tribal stories through the intermingled forms of poetry, songs, prayers, and anecdotes. Ranging across Navajo history, this collection in English and Navajo is warm and witty. Tapahonso states that for people like herself who live away from their homelands, "writing is the means for . . . restoring our spirits to the state of hozho, or beauty, which is the basis of Navajo philosophy." This book is a clear reflection of that sentiment. Recommended for most collections.-- Lisa A. Mitten, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib.

Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 1993
Imagine yourself in a Navajo home near sacred Shiprock, listening to tales that both define and transmit the ancient ways told casually as people go about the business of living. Now you can imagine Tapahonso's work. There is no real distinction between her long-lined, exploratory "poems" and dense, metaphorically rich "essays." Both capture the voice of a storyteller steeped in traditional ways but fluent as well in contemporary expression. Remembering her brothers in one poem, Tapahonso describes the talents of each and mourns the two who have passed on, connecting both with a spring snowstorm and a call from home. In another, a ghost of a suicide appears to her traveling family, and mortality seems both more inevitable and less important afterward. Tapahonso provides us with a true bridge to her culture and its spiritual insights. ((Reviewed Mar. 1, 1993))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1993, American Library Association.)