Deborah Jackson Taffa’s debut memoir, Whiskey Tender, looks at her coming of age as a member of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe in 1980s New Mexico. Taffa was raised by a mother who suffered from depression and a father who often found himself in trouble with the law. While her parents both grew up on reservations, they chose the promise of assimilation and acceptance for their kids. Yet a childhood in a small town where “cowboys still hated Indians” made Taffa and her sisters feel like outsiders. With humor and heart, she traces her complicated adolescence, weaving in Native American history that sheds a light on the injustices Indigenous people have faced in both the past and the present.
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