Red Paint

December 6, 2021
LaPointe, a Coast Salish poet and artist, sifts through her family’s lineage to reckon with the meaning of home in this stirring debut. A descendant of the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribe in Washington State, LaPointe writes in lucid vignettes that alternate between past and present as she reflects on her ancestors, Salish medicine workers who “faced violence, disease, and genocide”; her nomadic upbringing with her parents in the 1980s; and her romantic relationships in her 30s. Amid shifting landscapes—from the Swinomish Reservation to homelessness in her teens—she discovered punk music, which became a lifelong fascination (“To hear... a shrieking, guttural scream felt like being in the presence of power”) and the conduit to meeting her two love interests: her childhood boyfriend and her husband. While LaPointe’s prose falls flat when charting the love triangle that ensued between the three of them (“Being with him felt like picking up where we left off”), her writing radiates elsewhere—including in a story of her ancestor Comptia, one of the only Chinook Indians to survive a smallpox epidemic. She also displays immense vulnerability when discussing her sexual assaults, and how, through her “own ritual of healing,” she resisted being defined by them. LaPointe’s fresh and urgent perspective on Indigenous culture is enthralling. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi, Inc.

Starred review from January 15, 2022
A punk-infused memoir by a Coast Salish woman about her connection to her heritage. Beginning with a poem, a story from her family's history, and a description of what the book is and is not--"what happens in the longhouse is not what this story is about, but this is a story about healing"--LaPointe shifts back and forth between her own story and those of her family, specifically her great-grandmother and an ancestor who lost her own family to smallpox. Throughout the book, the author deftly navigates multiple timelines, weaving in and out of family history, personal narrative, and a host of other tangential topics: the Washington music scene, her love of Twin Peaks, a show "heavy with dark and supernatural themes, often terrifying, and along with Nirvana, responsible for putting this rainy corner of the Pacific Northwest on the map." The author connects concepts of home across generations, especially great-grandmother's recollections of moving throughout her childhood: "'My mother traveled with a rolled-up piece of linoleum, ' she'd recall warmly. 'No matter where we were, she'd lay it down, she'd create home wherever she could.' " The image of linoleum as home reoccurs, tying into LaPointe's discussion of her experience with teenage homelessness, while also expanding the concept of home to include that of her people historically. "My Family, my tribe, my ancestors, we were something temporary to the settlers," she writes. "Something that would eventually go away. Whether by disease or alcohol or poverty, our genocide was inevitable to them. I looked at the smoke pluming from the metal chimneys of the small reservation houses along the highway. But here we were, existing in our impermanent homes." Although the author does not shy away from heartache and sorrow, readers are welcomed on what is ultimately a healing journey that will stick in their memories. An engaging, poetic, educative examination of the search for home and personal and cultural identity.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.