Colin Mustful
Autor/a de Reclaiming Mni Sota: An Alternate History of the U.S. - Dakota War of 1862
Obres de Colin Mustful
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Membres
Ressenyes
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 6
- Membres
- 23
- Popularitat
- #537,598
- Valoració
- 4.7
- Ressenyes
- 8
- ISBN
- 7
- Preferit
- 1
Reclaiming Mini Sota: An Alternative History of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862 is his first work of alternative history, and his introduction touches on his motivations and goals. As a lifelong non-Native resident of Minnesota, he acknowledges the benefits he has gained from the history of violent displacement and wishes to approach his years of research in a new way, highlighting history’s conversation with the present
The Dakota War of 1862 was a small conflict with large repercussions – a regional uprising of several Sioux bands that resulted in several hundred recorded deaths, the forcible removal of the many Dakota from Minnesota and the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men, the largest mass execution in United States History. In his novel, Mustful follows much of the documented history, but also speculates on how things may have gone differently if several of the major figures had taken different paths.
Reclaiming Mini Sota does not follow any of those historical figures, but charts how two characters become involved in the conflict – Waabi, a young Ojibwe who loses almost everything in the lead-up to the war, and Samuel, a white Vermont boy who convinces his family to go out West to the promise of free and open land. Most of the first half of the novel charts their path to that moment, bound together only by loss and a love for Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Mustful gives a great deal of context of their ways of life and does an excellent job illustrating the motivations of settlers to move and the displaced to push back. No one is exonerated for their actions, but likewise we have sympathy for why many did as they did.
The narrative does drag in the middle third, and the dialogue occasionally veers into the didactic and instructional rather than organic. The turn from historical to alternative-history does not occur until almost three-quarters of the way through the book, and the final denouement comes on rather suddenly. I wish he spent more time on some of the later plot-threads, particularly the groups whose actions brought about the alternative present, who I feel were underrepresented. I was also initially shocked by the endings for a couple pivotal characters, but sitting in it, I think I better understand the sadness and injustice that Mustful was trying to relate. In all it was enjoyable on its own, but I think it would be well-placed along with reading on the history (of which the author makes many suggestions) or as part of a class. It would certainly be appropriate for young-adult students learning about the United State’s history of forced displacement, and looking forward to how the future could be a better, more just place.… (més)