Living on the Borderline (2019) by Melissa Michal

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Living on the Borderlines (2019)

by Melissa Michal

New York 2/105

Upstate: 2/23

Nedrow, New York

  Living on the Borderlines is an impressively deep cut in the 1001 Novels: A Library of America New York chapter.   Living on the Borderlines is representing the Onodaga Nation- one of the five original nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.  This collection of interwoven short stories is interesting but very conventional Native American lit- talking about the intergenerational trauma and troubled family relationships in a way that will be familiar to even a casual dabbler in Native American literary fiction.  Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the read- I'd rather read a million books like this one than another single YA book, but I know from history that the Iroquois Confederacy were both victim's and collaborators with the British and American authorities.  For example, the Iroquois seized the lands of another Native tribes and then sold it to the British in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

There was nothing within these pages that struck me as particularly Iroquois, but maybe that's because most of these protagonists are women with little or no formal education and limited life experience, giving their stories a similar tone. It's something I've noticed about fiction written from the POV of the non-literary classes- an author telling the story of a human being with a fifth grade education, is, to a certain extent, writing about a fifth grader.  That's not a criticism, simply an observation.   When, on the other hand, your character has a graduate degree in English literature or some other professional qualification, they are free to sound like the likely highly educated author.

   Michal's stories aren't exclusive to Onodaga country- one story is about a Haida (Pacific Northwest) carver of totem pools and his struggles to carry on the tradition to the next generation.  Another story centers on a character who was given away for adoption by an Iroquois woman to a non-Native family.  Some of the stories have elements of magical realism.   The stand out story was The Long Goodbye- about the matriarch of a family descending into Alzheimer's, haunted by her experience at the dehumanizing Indian Schools of the early 20th century.