“Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds” by Patty Krawec and Omar El Akkad encourages readers to reflect on who is telling the stories we consume, for whom they are intended, and for what purpose.

The book is divided into nine sections that focus on so-called "Bad Indians"—those who resist conforming to hegemony/ kyriarchy/systems of oppression/white supremacy. The chapters cover a range of themes, including creating space for storytelling, exploring nature and science writing, engaging with history, challenging patriarchy, and delving into memoirs, fiction, speculative fiction, and horror.

The authors emphasize the importance of connection, writing, and reading, especially in an era of book bans. They argue that to bring about change, we must read intentionally and radically. The book draws on the voices of other Indigenous and marginalized groups, including those of Black, Jewish, and Palestinian backgrounds, to explore complexity and help decolonize our language, storytelling conventions, and perspectives.

The authors showcase the power of language, illustrating how the stories of marginalized writers can help us envision new ways of understanding the world. Readers are invited to reflect on how these narratives can foster community and connection, as well as provide a deeper understanding of contexts often overlooked in mainstream historical texts, media, and national narratives/lore.

I highly recommend this book. Although I don’t often read nonfiction, I was captivated by the cover and description. Once I began reading, I was hooked. I plan to pre-order a hard copy so that I can reflect on the text, highlight important sections, take notes, and dog-ear my favorite passages.

While the authors address both past and present struggles, the reading experience was engaging, uplifting, and motivating. Anyone who enjoys the works of authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tommy Orange, Aaron John Curtis, Stephen Graham Jones, Ibram X. Kendi, Mikki Kendall, Angela Davis, and Morgan Talty may find this thought-provoking book compelling. Thank you to Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for the amazing ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who often describes the various indigenous-authored fiction and nonfiction works that I come across as tools that help me fill in all the many, many gaps where my own educational upbringing fell far short, "Bad Indians Book Club" is the perfect resource to help me continue on this personal journey of self-education. That, and of course it's the perfect resource to recommend to anyone who would like to start such a journey themselves. For the academic library that I work in, I consider this nothing short of a must-have for our shelves.

Bad Indians know that we survive together or not at all.

This book is about stories. Particularly about impact those stories have on Indigneous people all around the globe. It started off as as a reading recomendation list who asked the author how to better understand indigneous lives. That list later became a year of indigneous reading project, later became a podast. And now it's a book.

It prominently features Indigneous languages. And the polilingual person phenomenon when you know what the word means but don't know how to translate it. The author also makes a point of how not all text in foreign language should be translated. (Point with which I agree but that's a story for another time)

I really liked the book. It's full of fascinating pieces of trivia.

“Bad Indians Book Club” takes an interesting twist on literary analysis. Patty Krawec takes a look at other Indigenous peers work and morphs them together into a singular, somewhat linear story that helps nonNatives understand what may be seen as a culture dump in between stories.

(Mind you that’s not a read, as a Native journalist who often straddles Native spaces with predominantly white newsrooms, sometimes explaining simple cultural concepts, why we do offerings and why we use certain medicines, feels like a three hour dissertation defense). And I also have a love/hate relationship with the authors that were mentioned a lot: I love that they were included, but I hate that I can say I know at least four authors personally cited in this book, including one that is from my tribe that despite belonging to a very big nation, is often forgotten and not mentioned in history books (Alicia Elliot, Tuscarora). I hate that because it feeds into the narrative that we all know each other (we know we do, we just don’t like admitting it). (To be fair if you spit on a Tuscarora rez, there is a 6/10 chance you’ll land on someone with my last name and a 8/10 chance that it’ll land on a cousin).

Enough of my personal history with this book, I loved it. Give it a read. Librarians please put it on a “must read” bulletin for Native American Heritage Month (November). Just please read more Indigenous authors.

Tl:dr; this book is great book to recommend to a “Kyle” in your life, only “Bad Indians” stick to traditional ways of life, and discovery is dangerous.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley for an honest review. The thoughts expressed are my own.

My TBR basically exploded because of this book. It covers a wide variety of genres and recommends some books I’ve read, but a lot of books I haven’t and I’m really excited to pick up a few of them in the future. Krawec was also already on my TBR with her book Becoming Kin, but I ended up picking this up first. If you’re looking for someone to recommend some “radical” reading this book is great, because it also ties it into other works and an important and timely discussion. Basically, it makes you want to join Krawec’s bookclub or start your own with this as a jumping off point.

Each of the chapters discusses a different genre and some discussions points that can be had surrounding narratives from marginalized authors. Krawec discusses authors from many indigenous communities, but also black and Jewish authors. However, the main point is to read books that are outside of the mainstream perspective and to broaden your reading. She’s looking for people to help take down systems and institutions and a starting point is to do it through discussions around literature.

I’ve read some of the books mentioned such as Antelope Woman, Braiding Sweetgrass, Never Whistle at Night, Moon of the Crusted Snow, and Hood Feminism. But there are plenty of books mentioned that I’ve had on my TBR for awhile like Buffalo is the New Buffalo, Moon of the Turning Leaves, A Snake Falls to the Earth, and Parable of the Sower. However, she’s made me add a whole bunch of things to my TBR like Thyme Travellers, Moonshot, A Howl, and The Two of Raven.

I think my favorite chapters were on horror and speculative fiction, but that’s probably because that is where my reading interests are in general and I felt more engaged with the conversation because I’d already read some of the books mentioned. However, I think that the other chapters were technically more valuable for the current me because they were outside of my wheelhouse.

If I have one criticism it is that it feels like it ends abruptly. It felt like it needed just a little more to wrap everything up. However, I suppose that it fits with the idea of a story without ending. I guess I just like my nonfiction to have a more definitive wrap-up at the end. I do appreciate that it had a rather extensive bibliography at the end and that the author also listed all the Podcasts that she referenced throughout.

Overall, I would recommend this for readers looking to expand their TBR and who want to read from more marginalized authors and want to know where to start. Yeah, there are other places and people who can also recommend books, and I’m not saying not to read what they’re recommending, I’m just saying that Krawec puts together a lot of recommendations all in one place. I'm looking forward to picking up her other book in the not to distant future along with some of the titles she mentioned in this book.