The Heirs of Columbus

“When you should learn a ebook on Columbus,” declared the Los Angeles Instances in its assessment of The Heirs of Columbus, “that is the one.” Gerald Vizenor’s novel reclaims the story of Chrisopher Columbus on behalf of Native Individuals by declaring the explorer himself to be a descendent of early Mayans and follows the adventures of his modern-day, mixedblood heirs as they create a unbelievable tribal nation.

The genetic heirs of Christopher Columbus meet yearly on the Stone Tavern on the headwaters of the Mississippi to recollect their “tales within the blood” and plan their tribal nation. They’re impressed by the late-night speak radio discourses of Stone Columbus, a trickster healer who turned wealthy because the captain of the sovereign bingo barge Santa Maria On line casino, anchored within the worldwide waters of the Lake of the Woods. The heirs’ plan to reclaim their heritage enrages the federal government and evokes the tribal nations in a comic book story of mythic proportions.

Vizenor is a mixedblood Chippewa who writes fiction within the trickster mode of Native American custom, utilizing humor to problem obtained concepts and subvert the established order. In The Heirs of Columbus he “reveals not solely how Indians have staved off the tidal wave of assimilation,” famous the San Francisco Chronicle, “but additionally how, by way of humor and persistence, they generally reverse the route of cultural appropriation and, within the course of, rework the alien values imposed on them.”

“Vizenor understands the wilder, irrational, half-mad components of the Discoverer’s soul as few folks ever have,” famous Kirkpatrick Sale within the Nation; “Columbus is appropriated right here in a completely new approach, made to be an Indian in service to his Indian descendents.” And the Voice Literary Complement mentioned “Much more rousing than Vizenor’s deconstruction of Columbus, although, is his different imaginative and prescient of an American id.”