I am a current student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln taking a class called Intro to Native American Literature. When looking at the assigned passages it looked too confusing and I didn't think I was going to like or learn much from it, I was wrong. There was one passage in "Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America" by Joy Harjo that changed my whole perspective on the lives of Native Americans and it was "The Border State Patrol" by Leslie Marmon Silko (1994). Leslie Silko made many good points and informed me that Native Americans DO NOT have the same rights that Americans do and that is what angers me. You can easily tell by just reading it that us, her audience, is trying to get through our heads that we are not treating Native Americans with the kind of respect that we treat others with.
My step-dad and I have been face to face with Native Americans on the reservation when we built them a new library. They were so kind that they would come to us everyday with sandwiches and drinks and asked us if we need anything else to just call them, now why would they do that? They would do that because they are good people! Everybody thinks they are the enemy because of the rumors that have gone around our society and we as kids have been raised to think that they are bad people when they actually are not. That is exactly what the Border Patrol is doing in the passage, discriminating and it is so hard to read.
I know I only talked about one passage in the book but all together I am glad that I got to learn more about the lives that the Native Americans have to live and Leslie Marmon Silko did a great job at teaching it to me. That is why I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn the story of Native Americans and learn more about their lives.

Stunning. This book was published in 1997, but it is not at all outdated. It is just as relevant and important as it was when written.

The book is a mix of memoir, poetry, and a smaller amount of fiction. Each piece has a short introduction to the author. Most authors identify themselves by nation, clan, community, ancestors, parents. Those of us whose ancestors came from other continents do not, cannot, have the kind of continuity of community that these women do - even though we disrupted their communities, they still have that sense, or have worked to rebuild it. And the stories show a value system that rates people, nature, and family as much more important than money and accumulating things.

The quality of writing is uniformly excellent. Some of the authors are well known and some are not; all of them contribute valuable stories. The editors did a great job. The book gives the reader a sense of what it is like to be a woman and a native in modern times, and a sense of the history of how it got this way.

The book is organized into four sections: The Beginning of the World; Within the Enemy: Challenge; Transformation: Voices of the Invisible; and Dreamwalkers: The Returning. This structure, and the pieces chosen for each section, makes sense and gives a kind of progression. Each section is excellent. There's a lot about the tragedy of the Indian schools (which required kids to speak only the enemy's language) and the culture clash even when the person chooses to get the standard western education. There's an excellent piece on the evolution on the AIM movement. And so much more. And many glimpses of family life: happy, tragic, evolving. At over 550 pages, it is not a quick read, but it is well worthwhile.

While it is difficult to contend with a title and certain contributions that bristle with such fierce and territorial exclusion, it is perhaps important to note that this is precisely the experience of so many Native American women in our society. Other-footing the shoe initiates the beginnings of a communicative balance and, I found, helps to bridge the distance between two very disparate encounters with life in the United States. This collection of work is, for the most part, quite superb and I would recommend it to any brave soul struggling for survival in what seems, at times, to be a coldly pre-determined world.

Wonderful compilation of Native women writers!

really good! would highly recommend for anyone and everyone

"filled with old lovers, in the clutch of the chair, you are a bloom of uncombed hair."

Read half but even taking into account that the women weren't professional writers, I found it a bit clunky.

Contemporary native women's writing (well, the 90's) featuring stories, essays, and all manner of amazing works.

Amazing book. You learn about human beings via American Indian women. And you also lean about the problems with naming and language, the one that prevails in our culture, excluding so many people, trying to harm so many people. There are poems, stories, anecdotes, there is herstory, analysis… There are also some writers, like Joy Harjo, who's been the first native writer to be awarded a most important poetry prize in the USA. Harjo is a musician and composer too. I have a few of her poetry books. I don't share the spiritual part, but I love her writing anyway. This is another question in our demented cultural upbringing: we are taught we need to like what reflects the identity of the "team" we are supposed to be in.

One of the most coherent, inspiring and honest books I've read. Women's voices are always the most powerful for me.

Heading each piece, the writer names the nation to which they belong—it feels like defiance against the taxonomic table of contents that typifies the western itch to classify and anthologize. Different values too. When the dominant culture asserts its might by saying “I am [Italian/American/whatever]”, instead to say, I belong to ______ nation- I am of my people. The title comes back to me again and again: Reinventing the Enemy's Language. To become expert in something that contributes nothing of value or enrichment to yourself, only for its use to blunt the blows of your oppressor. What damning work in these stories. Imagine what’s told in Native tongue when they don’t have to explain things to me.

Excellent!

Am gonna write this one up for my website also. Have a question about the decision on "identity" in this book and representation of "federally recognized" versus "non recognized." More to come at http://cutchabaldy.weebly.com