#notyourprincess is an #ownvoices book by indigenous women for indigenous women. Filled with poems, short essays and artwork, I found it a very good beginning of a conversation about the particular trials that indigenous women face. For example, my favourite poem was 'The Things We Taught Our Daughters' which talked about generations of toxicity and abuse. The artwork was also of a consistently high calibre. I wish I knew more about art so I could talk about it properly, but unfortunately I don't. 

However, I say that this is the beginning of a conversation for a reason. I was quite disappointed that there weren't any essays that really went in-depth into any of the topics discussed. None of the essays went beyond a couple of paragraphs, if I remember correctly. I also found that this would have been a better ARC if it had been printed rather than an ebook. I think that the photos and artwork would have just looked better on a printed page. 

I just feel a bit disappointed by this anthology. It has the kernels of a really fantastic book, but unfortunately it just isn't there for me.

“We aren’t historic figures; we are modern women.”

** Trigger warning for allusions to violence against women, suicidal ideation, genocide, and racism and sexism. **

It’s strange to me how people always want me to be an “authentic Indian.” When I say I’m Haudenosaunee, they want me to look a certain way. Act a certain way. They’re disappointed when what they get is . . . just me. White-faced, red-haired. They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create Indians who could blend in like me. But now they don’t want me either. I’m not Indian enough. They can’t make up their minds. They want buckskin and war paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand recorded for them, but with English subtitles of course. They want educated, well-spoken, but not too smart. Christian, well-behaved, never questioning. They want to learn the history of the people, but not the ones who are here now, waving signs in their faces, asking them for clean drinking water, asking them why their women are going missing, asking them why their land is being ruined. They want fantastical stories of the Indians that used to roam this land. They want my culture behind glass in a museum. But they don’t want me. I’m not Indian enough.

(“The Invisible Indians,” Shelby Lisk)

###

Because history moves like a fevered heat down through the arteries of generations
Because PTSD to the family tree is like an ax Because colonization is the ghosts of buffalos with broken backs
Because today only burning flags could be found at the ghost dance of my people

(“Stereotype This,” Melanie Fey)

###

I feel like I should begin this review with a word of caution: If you see any complaints about formatting problems ahead of the pub date, disregard them. The Kindle version of this ARC is indeed a hot mess, but this is par for the course when it comes to books with a heavy graphic element. The acsm file, read on Adobe Digital Editions (which I loathe, but happily suffered for this book!), gives a much clearer picture of what the finished, physical copy is meant to look like. And, if Amazon’s listing is any indication, #NOTYOURPRINCESS: VOICES OF NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN will only be released in print.

That said, #NOTYOURPRINCESS is fierce, vibrant, and nicely organized. It feels a lot like an experimental art project, and I mean that in the best way possible. Within these here pages you’ll find an eclectic mix of personal essays, poems, quotes, photographs, line art, watercolors, comics, portraits of activists and athletes, and interviews with Native women. #LittleSalmonWoman (Lianne Charlie) even adopts the format of an Instagram page, while “More Than Meets the Eye” (Kelly Edzerza-Babty and Claire Anderson) profiles ReMatriate, which shares images of modern Native women on social media in order to reclaim their identities and broaden our ideas of what a “real” Native American woman looks like. (The quote in my review’s title comes from Claire Anderson, a founding member of ReMatriate.)

The topics touched upon run the gamut: genocide, colonization, forced assimilation, cultural appropriation, kidnapping, rape, domestic violence, mass incarceration, mental illness, sexuality, addiction, street harassment, homelessness, and intergenerational trauma.

As with most anthologies, #NOTYOURPRINCESS is a bit of a mixed bag; although, as a white woman, I’m 110% positive that Indigenous readers will get more out of it than I did. Much to my surprise – since I don’t always “get” poetry – some of the poems are among my favorites. Helen Knott’s “The Things We Taught Our Daughters” is a searing and heartbreaking indictment of interpersonal violence, rape culture, and the patriarchy, while Melanie Fey tackles intergenerational trauma and contemporary bigotry with equal passion and anguish in “Stereotype This.” (Both of these are examples of the book’s eye-catching design, fwiw.)

I also enjoyed the pieces that mixed visual and written media; e.g, “My Grandmother Sophia” by Saige Mukash and “It Could Have Been Me” by Patty Stonefish. Shelby Lisk’s “The Invisible Indians,” quoted at the top of this review, is a powerful rebuttal to Western notions of what a “real” Indian looks like (and brings to mind the 2016 book, ‘ALL THE READ INDIANS DIED OFF’: AND 20 OTHER MYTHS ABOUT NATIVE AMERICANS, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz & Dina Gilio-Whitaker).

My absolute favorite piece is the lone comic in the collection, “A Tale of Two Winonas” by Winona Linn. An f-you to the doomed lovers trope, Linn addresses such heady topics as suicide, rape, forced marriage, colonialism, and racism and misogyny with humor and wit – and all in a mere two pages. I was thrilled to see in the “Contributors” section that Linn is currently in Paris, working on a graphic novel.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I did not mention “Real NDNZ,” Pamela J. Peters’s profile of the Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood project. This photo series takes scenes from classic American films and replaces them with images of Native actors – thus highlighting and reimagining the racist stereotyping of classic cinema, while also combating the invisibility of Native actors in modern film. #NOTYOURPRINCESS includes some rather stunning portraits of Shayna Jackson as Audrey Hepburn and Deja Jones as Ava Gardner.

** Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. **

(I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.)

In this collection of art, poems, and short stories, Native American women share their experiences. Part of the mission is reclamation of vibrant cultural voices and customs, and part of this is an in-your-face calling out of brutal stereotypes. Lastly, there's a must-be-heard message about violence against women and girls.

This is a book that I will buy in print for my high school classroom library AND for my personal library. These stories tore me wide open, and I hope they do the same for my students. That's all I really want to say about this, here. Read it, buy it, share it.

A great combination of memoir, story, art, politics.

No one likes to be boxed in, to have things assumed about them, to be a fetish for some, to be a sterotype, and that is what this book is trying to break. These are the voices of women and girls of First Nation and Native Peoples.

Some stories are quite sad, others are of being more, of breaking free. These are poems, and essays, and photos, and all sorts of ways that girls and women are speaking out against stereotypes.

Here is part of an poem from Melanie Fey (Diné)

<block quote>Today I couldn't handle the pain of being an American Indian
There's a clawing deep inside
Like a spider in a thirsty drought
And it screams in broken lullaby:
I don't want to be a drunk Indian
I don't want to be the drunk. Indian

TOday a boarding school sat like a lump in my throat
And the ghosts of the dead Indian children
With butchered hair and broken Christian wings
Shatter bottle down on my feet and screamed:
We don't want to be drunk Indians
We don't want to be the drunk Indians.</blockquote>

Or this one by Francine Cunningham (Cree/Métis)
<blockquote>
What are you?
Excuse me?
You don't look all white.
I'm Indigenous
Oh, well what kind of Natiave are you?
Cree
You don't really look it.
I am also Scottish and Métis on my dat's side
Were you raise don a reserve?
No I was raised in the city
Oh well, I guess you're not a real one then.</blockquote>

Highly recommended reading just to hear the voices of the different Native women speaking.



Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

An interesting idea, for sure. I wish my e-ARC was better formatted as I found it difficult to distinguish between the artwork, essays, poems and quotes. Selfishly I was hoping to read something more significant from someone from my own tribe (Tlingit) and while a contribution is there, it wasn't as satisfying as I'd liked. Really enjoyed several of the contributions but on the whole wanted just a little bit more.

I received an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

My main reasons for reading this book are simple. There are so many own voices out there and I want to read and support as many as I can. I was also looking forward to learning more about Native culture as well as the women telling their sides and I was not disappointed.

This book depicts all the different, and important stories as essays, art, poems. It is a beautiful work by a wide range of women. From doctors to students, from mothers to daughters, they all share their experiences growing up and living as indigenous people,

Unfortunately, the formatting made it very tiring to read on my e-reader. Some of the works used different colours which weren't all displayed correctly; artworks were split between the screens; or sentences were falsely connected with other sentences. I really hope that the physical copy will portray everything as it was intended, because it will have an even stronger effect on the reader that way

https://anovelhaul.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/notyourprincess-ed-by-lisa-charleyboy-and-mary-beth-leatherdale/

This is a collection of works (short stories, drawings, poems, comics) by Native women. It's a short book but with its few pages it achieved so much. It managed to move me and make me think and most importantly it gave visibility to a lot of women. It put them front and centre and we get to hear their voices, their struggles, their happiness, their day to day life, the systematic and every day racism they have to face, the heritage that they're so proud of but also the ones that they're not that proud of and the different intersections they have in their every day life. We got stories about teenagers, adults, queer women, successful women, women who are not afraid to call out an unjust system that still goes on until today. I actually admire the capacity that some of these works had to make me feel so much. There are so many of these women that are still carrying the weight that their ancestors had and who are trying to overcome the past-trauma and some of them are trying to take control of it.

I believe this was created by Native women for Native women and I just felt so grateful to be able to see all of this and read their stories. This is a story of the resilience that Indigenous women have been going through for so many years in the face of a corrupt and racially biased system that caters towards their oppression and the horrible things that keep happening to people like them. I felt the strength that these women had through the pages and it filled me up with inspiration and admiration. I love that we get pictures of successful Native women who achieved their dreams and also that we saw some of the (very little still) representation that they get in the media. It was incredibly interesting to also see people talking about current issues that still to this day are not solved and how they're using social media to make a change (this is specially with the Dakota Pipeline story).

My favourite works were The Things We Taught Our Daughters by Helen Knott (Dane Zaa/Cree) which is a poem about the transfer of the toxicity through family that became a pattern in their lives and the hope of healing and doing better in the future, My Grandmother Sophia by Saige Mukash (Cree) which is about Saige's grandmother and her realisation of things after she passed away, Blankets of Shame by Maria Campbell (Métis) which is about the shame that Indigenous people use like a blanket in their every day life and Portrait by Sierra Edd (Diné) which is about her work helping fight the Dakota Pipeline (which I'm so thankful because I never really understood what was happening there until now).

Fantastic collection of prose, poetry, and art from indigenous female creators. Important voices and stories.

A beautiful book full of art, poetry, quotes and snippets of autobiography from a wide range of native women (teens through adults; Americans and Canadians; doctors, lawyers, athletes, artists, students, mothers, daughters, and on and on), speaking up about what it really means to be a native woman and speaking out against stereotypes, cultural appropriation, violence, abuse, and the generational impact of colonialism and oppression.

I read this in e-book format and unfortunately the formatting was off in quite a few places, so paintings and photographs were broken into pieces and some text was all out of whack. Based on that, I'd recommend picking up a physical copy of the book in order to get the full impact of the art and words.

Disclaimer: A free copy of this book was received through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a #ownvoices book and I’ve talked before about how important these books are, but it doesn’t mean that every single one of them is a winner. This book showcases stories, poems and art by indigenous women about being Native American in today’s society. I really wanted this one to be, and it’s a shame that it just wasn’t.

This book isn’t well curated and it’s not a significant length. Now I don’t mean that it’s short, I mean they have enough contributors that 25% of the book (according to my Kindle) is just contributor bios and acknowledgements while the other 75% is content. That’s not a good ratio and even THAT is generous considering much of the content was a single page image across several pages because of typesetting errors that will be fixed in the proper release, so the content section will likely be shorter.

I cannot stress enough that this review is based on an ARC that was bordering on unreadable. I’m positive that it will be better formatted upon release and perhaps there are whole poems that got lost in the formatting. As it stands, this book needs far more artwork, poems and stories to feel substantial. Even formatted properly though this book is so art heavy I would avoid purchasing a copy for an e-reader as you lose a lot of the intended content when everything is black and white.

I want to hear the voices of these women. I am a forgettable percentage Native American, but I had relatives on the reserve. My mother’s grandparents who raised her made us moccasins that were hand beaded and doll clothes out of rabbit fur. These stories are important to me, and they deserve more.

The stories I read were interesting, especially the personal tales. The poetry wasn’t much to my taste, I would have preferred if the book focused on letting indigenous women tell their stories. Speak about their struggles growing up and figuring out their identity. Although perhaps when the book is formatted the poems will be more heartfelt.

Overall I just didn’t feel like there was much substance here, a few really strong stories with more content about the contributors than actual content.

I saw #NotYourPrincess on NetGalley and knew I had to read it.

Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible.

I don’t know where to begin with this review. It’s a short book but it’s a powerful read for those of us who have been overlooked in society and even in marginalized movements. #NOTYOURPRINCESS explores what it means to be a Native woman and looks at the experiences of several woman through poetry, art, comics, and stories.

There were 2 stories and 1 comic that really stuck with me with I was reading this. The first was BLANKETS OF SHAME by Maria Campbell which talks about how we all wear blankets of shame. The story starts with Maria talking about how her Cheechum told her that the government stripped Natives of everything that made them living souls and then gave them blankets to hide their shame and we still carry those blankets of shame through intergenerational trauma.

INVISIBLE INDIANS by Shelby Lisk explores what it’s like when Native people don’t meet the expectations of how white people view us and how they try to strip away our identities in order to make themselves feel superior.

THE TALE OF TWO WINONAS by Winona Linn is a comic that deals with tragedy porn, the weight of names, and heroes.

I loved every piece of this book and I cannot wait to have a finished copy in my hands. You can preorder here.

To me this, this collection of poetry and prose is important. It gives voices to Indigenous women, tells their stories and empowers their sisters to embrace themselves and who they are. To me, this collection that contains experiences I haven’t felt myself and experiences I deal with as well into words. The poems and stories that did this was stories talking about how they weren’t raised with their heritage and have to learn it on their own or families that whitewashed themselves to hide who they are, much like my own family has. These pieces hit hard while reading them, leaving me wanting to tell my own story instead of biting it back in fear of ‘not fitting’ the expected mold.

To me, I found these pieces well done. However, about half way through this collection, the formatting sort of gave out on me. Sentences ran into other sentences, not ending but cut off suddenly. Some poems make use of different colored fonts while others have the same idea, but the formatting made it repeat the sentence above when it wasn’t meant to. As it was, the white colored fonts can’t be seen well on kindles, leaving your eyes hurting trying to read it. A more common issue with ebooks on kindles is art work getting cut to pieces so it’s not a full images but small pieces. This was an issue through this arc as well. I felt like the formatting issues did effect my impression simply because half of the pieces I couldn’t understand because I had to try and repiece the pieces together again, leaving me a little frustrated. Hopefully, this can be fixed before this goes out into ebook formats.

Do I recommend this? Yes. Wait to get it in physical form or for the publishers say that formatting has been fixed for ebooks if you get it. I find it a really important read and one that touched my soul and my own experience of trying to find my way of my heritage and understand what that means for the woman I am, as a Metis, who’s family that has been rewritting who they are to hide this side. I feel like this book is important to both Indigenous women and women who want to better understand the struggle.

I really wanted to love this, because when I realized it was a compilation of artwork and stories from native American women, I was like, "Yeah, sign me up!" I always am looking for more education, and I strongly believe that there's no better place to be educated than through the experiences of the marginalized peoples who are actually going through these situations.

That said, this book is just really poorly compiled. The formatting is poor, and by the time I finished my ARC of it, I had only actually read 4-5 stories and a couple of very short poems, as well as maybe half a dozen quotes. The majority of the book was just graphic designs (not the art of the women - I mean literally just random graphic designs) and blank spaces.

If the editors ever decided to revisit this idea and add a lot more stories and artwork to it, I think it would be a 5-star read and I'd be the first one to pick up a hard copy to keep on my shelf, but as it is, this wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Annick Press for granting me this ARC! All opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

This anthology from Indigenous women across North America is a revelation of their brilliant resilience in the face of white supremacist colonialist violence, so all readers should savour their words!

The words, photos and art in this collection were powerful and beautiful. It was a very quick read and I wish there was even more to experience. My major issue here was the formatting. I understand that it was an eARC, but it was so poorly formatted that it was distracting and sometimes downright confusing. Lines of text clearly where they didn't belong. Artwork cut into pages or breaking up the text around it. It's a bummer that it was such a mess, hopefully the physical book will get it right. The stories here deserve a better presentation.