Spirit Car is a memoir that blends fiction and carefully researched history. This book retraces my family’s Dakota heritage across five generations.
Spirit Car was inspired by my mother’s story of having been left for two years at a mission boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Spirit Car recreates stories that are based on real people whose lives have been reimagined on a bedrock of facts. The story begins with a vivid account of the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota. My great-great-grandmother, Rosalie Marpiya Mase (Iron Cloud), took refuge at Fort Ridgely with her French-Canadian husband and their seven children. Rosalie felt the anguish of seeing her family members forced to defend themselves from Dakota relatives bent on killing whites and their “mixed-blood” children.
From this pivotal moment in history, we follow the family’s nomadic travels across South Dakota and Nebraska as they struggle to survive. In 2002, the story comes full circle with the first-ever Dakota Commemorative March. This event honored the 1,700 Dakota who were forcibly removed from Minnesota following the 1862 war.
These stories were written to recreate a family history that has been lost over time. They may have been repressed as too painful or simply set aside as the gritty issues of survival demanded attention. Recreating certain moments in history and reliving them through my own imagination has allowed me to know earlier generations of my family. In the process, I discovered just how deeply our identities are influenced by the forces of history.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Wilson is a creative nonfiction writer. Her essays and memoir use personal experience to illustrate broader social and historical context. Her first book, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, (Borealis Books, 2006) won the 2006 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir, Autobiography, and Creative Nonfiction. Her second book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, (Borealis Books), was released in September 2011.
Spirit Car is an historical memoir about cultural identity and heritage. This project has received awards from the Jerome Travel & Study program, the Minnesota Historical Society, Norcroft Writer’s Retreat, and Blacklock Nature Center. Beloved Child--a collection of personal stories on transforming historical trauma--has received awards from the Jerome Travel & Study program, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Ragdale Artist Residency, and the Hedgebrook Residency for Women Writers.
Her work has been published in Fiction on a Stick; American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice; Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time; The American Indian Quarterly, The View from the Loft, Minnesota Women’s Press, Pioneer Press and many other local publications. She was the editor for Minnesota Literature, a newsletter containing news and information of interest to Minnesota’s writing community, from 2002-2004. She is a past board chair and member of SASE: The Write Place, and the founder and editor of The Artist’s Voice, a publication of artists writing about their own work, published by the Southern Theater.
Diane is the Executive Director of Dream of Wild Health, a Native owned 10-acre farm in Hugo, Minnesota. She lives with her artist husband, Jim Denomie, Emma the love bully, and two stray cats. A master gardener, Diane maintains a large butterfly garden filled with native plants. She is a member of the Dakota Kiciya and helps organize the Dakota Commemorative Marches on the Lower Sioux reservation.
Diane’s work is inspired by her daughter, Jodi, and her wonderful family. She is also blessed with two step-daughters, Cheryl and Sheila, a step-son, Cody, and six grandchildren, Tyler, Kelci, Logan, David, Bradley, and Kyle.
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See more about the book and author Diane Wilson at:
http://www.wilsonwords.com/files/overview.php
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