Cherie Rankin reviews David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut novel Winter Counts in the latest issue of the Journal of Working-Class Studies. Winter Counts is a riveting look at the power of family, tradition, and connection.
Set on the Lakota Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the author draws on the poignancy of all three when they are entwined in battling the drug trade on the reservation that threatens the life of its people. You can read more this review, as well as a large number of other articles, by following the link below. Oh and good news! It’s an open-source journal:
https://journals.uwyo.edu/…/work…/article/view/7261/5841
Heading image source: goodreads.com
Ah, the working class…
I have spent my entire life around them, and I have known amazing people, but..
Some of us have a mentality that is self defeating.
Many of us call footballers heroes, but pay no mind to the soldier with PTSD laying in the doorway
Some aggressively pull their children away from the mentally ill man in the street, but welcome a weed dealer into their home, around said child.
We glamourise gangsters, but don’t respect the nurses that end up nursing our drunken backsides after one too many.
We sneer at intelligent working class people, as early as schooldays. A man who rises out of poverty, “turned his back on his own”.
We don’t learn economics and politics that would help us understand how the system can be used to keep us down.
The homophobia of the many working class men and some women is still dismaying.
If ever there was a sign of the working class man’s utter emasculation, it is that they are agitated by such a harmless community.
Such inadequacy is depressing.
My class are too prone to judging “what” people are, instead of “who” they are, and so end up hopelessly ignorant.
Many of us are better. Too many aren’t. I am sick of the knuckle draggers.
I don’t like my people anymore.