The bestselling memoir of a Native American woman's struggles and the life she found in activism: "courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational" ( Publishers Weekly). Mary Brave Bird grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity. With her white father gone, she was left to endure "half-breed" status amid the violence, machismo, and aimless drinking of life on the reservation. Rebelling against all this—as well as a punishing Catholic missionary school—she became a teenage runaway. Mary was eighteen and pregnant when the rebellion at Wounded Knee happened in 1973. Inspired to take action, she joined the American Indian Movement to fight for the rights of her people. Later, she married Leonard Crow Dog, the AIM's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a story of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

本書は、抑圧された先住民のアイデンティティを一人の女性が凄まじい熱量で描いた魂の記録です。同化政策の暴力や貧困を直視し、誇りを取り戻そうとする言葉は、詩的でありながら血を流すような生々しさに満ちています。権利運動の記録を超え、自己のルーツを再定義する精神的な再生の旅こそが、本作の文学的な核といえるでしょう。 映像化作品では歴史的蜂起の緊迫感が際立ちますが、原作には独白でしか到達できない内面の深淵があります。映像が捉える動的なドラマと、書物が刻む静かなる祈りを併せて味わうことで、彼女の闘志はより立体的に響き渡ります。メディアの差異を超えて共鳴し合うこの物語は、読む者の魂を激しく揺さぶらずにはおきません。