Sneak Peek: Kelli Jo Ford Podcast

Kelli Jo Ford: I think it is an important thing about the book, and maybe important for readers to recognize as well. I think sometimes readers outside of our cultures or communities might come to fiction written by Native and indigenous people looking for maybe more of a cultural framework or explanation. That's sometimes what our books do, but it's not always. And something that I think about and talk about with writing students I get the chance to work with is that that our books should get to be considered as art, too, and not sort of cultural explainers. And that sometimes we have to insist upon that. So, the characters are Cherokee through and through, you know, their experience, their existence is-- everything they do is colored by the fact that they're Cherokee women who grew up together with one another in the Cherokee Nation.