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Laughing Boy A Navajo Love Story Oliver La Farge 9780618446728 Books

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Laughing Boy A Navajo Love Story Oliver La Farge 9780618446728 Books

I had a wonderfully synchronistic event recently. While researching the family name of Perry in my genealogy, the name of Oliver Hazard Perry LaFarge came up as a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1930 for this novel, “Laughing Boy.” It was finished in 1929 for his Masters Degree at Harvard. His field was anthropology. I rushed to find if it on Kindle. Yes, surprisingly, there it was. I was so excited to be able to read it immediately, thanks to Kindle. A shorter version of his name is used, Oliver LaFarge. I bought it immediately and started reading. As I write this review, I am acutely aware of writing this review like in a time warp after my ancestor’s famous book written so many years ago, feeling honored to do so.

By the time I finished the second chapter, I knew I had found a fantastic page turner. I continued to read straight through, even all night, the only time I have ever done that and suffered a major withdrawal trying to return to the present the next day. Oliver was exceptionally talented at painting beautiful word scenes of the desert, a shack, a funny incident, so I felt I was there right in the story. I fully understand why it won the Pulitzer Prize and continues to be read today. A hard bound volume I came upon days later in a used book store, a 1963 Sentry Edition published by the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, states on its cover, “An American classic – the greatest novel yet written about the original American.” It is about the life of Native Americans at the time when Native children were being taken from their families and put in “American schools." It is not a political book. It is a love story, written by an anthropologist, who chose to write about an historical time in our country concerning the aftermath of what happens to these Native American children all grown up as they try to assimilate into society, but which society?

Venue for this book is the Four Corners area of the West and the Navajo lands. It is rich in reporting Navajo spirituality and mythology. An incredible love story will tug deeply at your heart strings. The girl is "American Schooled" trying to survive now that she is on her own. The handsome boy is as native a Navajo as you can get, with a sense of humor too. He struggles to understand the beautiful girl he has fallen in love with, also admired by other men. The two characters with different backgrounds are challenged learning to live together as their love continues to grow. She helps him to become a talented and well-known silversmith. He helps her to discover how to weave again, and she too becomes recognized for her talented weaving craft, which is like a meditation for her. It helps to heal her soul. As each struggles to grow and mature in the artistic skills and in their love, they walk in the beauty together. Quotations can be found throughout the book of the Navajo chants of walking in beauty. There are exciting actions throughout like horse races, survival happenings, and difficult heartaches as each uncovers some unexpected truths about who they really are. Their strong love, cemented in high values and absolute dedication to each other, outstandingly exemplifies how love can get you through life’s difficulties. Always they walk in beauty.

A ceremony of the Navajo culture told herein relates to today, their "Enemy Blessing," used to assist returning warriors to find their balance again. Psychologists are now studying this ceremony to apply to our own returning war veterans dealing with “moral injury.” It was fascinating for me to read this. I felt familiarity with this ancestor of mine through his writing. I would love to have met him. I could have. I was in my 20s when he died, if only I had known about him them. Growing up in Massachusetts in an area of Worcester, my grammar school stood on Native land and was called, "Tatnuck Grammar School," after the local Tatnuck tribe. My schooling years there were filled with Native American lore. My first boating experience was to learn to paddle an Indian canoe while singing the round with others, “Our paddles swift and bright, flashing like silver, swift as the wild goose flies, dip dip and swing, dip dip and swing.” Cape Cod, were we vacationed annually, is full of Indian lore and places with Indian names. I entered young adulthood with Indian jewelry, baskets, and a fascination with Indian mythology. “Laughing Boy” is so rich in colorful description of the Native American culture it brought back these childhood years, especially when referring to the silver work and weaving. Anyone interested in Native American stories will appreciate this. Besides, it is a darn good love story! Unforgettable.

Times have changed. Not many are alive now to report about the horror those children suffered by being taken from their homes to “American Schooling” and left to find their own way afterwards. It is wonderful to have this book documenting those times. Rough as they were for the many who lived through them, the fabric woven in this story never loses the positive thread of the Navajo love of their people’s culture, though some are good and some are bad (also seen here), and the beauty of their land in the West. Toward the end the boy, now a mature successful man even in difficult times that are part of the human condition states, “In beauty it is finished, in beauty it is finished, in beauty it is finished. Thanks.”

Reviewed for Kindle by “Easy Reader” July 2014


Tags : Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story [Oliver La Farge] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV>Capturing the essence of the Southwest in 1915, Oliver La Farge's Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel is an enduring American classic. At a ceremonial dance,Oliver La Farge,Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story,Mariner Books,0618446729,Classics,Literary,Historical fiction,Historical fiction.,Navajo Indians,Navajo Indians;Fiction.,Western stories,Western stories.,FICTION Classics,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Literature - Classics Criticism,FIC004000,FIC019000

Laughing Boy A Navajo Love Story Oliver La Farge 9780618446728 Books Reviews

Great book. Opens ones eyes to prejudice against native Americans during the early 1900s. A tender story.
I really enjoyed this book. It was beautifully written. It has the most beautiful love story woven through it and speaks of the Navajo customs and ways of life. I love the stream of consciousness style in which a lot of it is written. This is why books are better than movies.
La Farge was an anthropologist and archaeologist, and in this short and beautiful book he creates a young Navajo male, Laughing Boy, who falls for a young woman, Slim Girl, who was taken from traditional Navajo culture at a young age and sent to school in white man's culture. Laughing Boy was raised in traditional Navajo culture, and risks greatly by marrying this semi-alien woman in defiance of family and tradition. Theirs is an intense and fragile love story, and the unexpected ending is wonderfully appropriate, albeit tragic. The author has done an excellent job of demonstrating some of the Navajo values and ways of thinking and behaving, very different from mainstream American culture.
This was a sensitively written story from a Native American point of view about the situations people can be pressed into and the impact on their beliefs, attachments and ethical choices. It gives insight into the NA culture and its efforts to assimilate with the dominant culture of whites.
When I realized this book was about Native Americans, I almost put it down.
Laughing Boy was part of my project to read every Pulitzer winning novel, and I was still fresh from slogging through the “Negro story” that won the year before (1929). Sister Scarlet Mary was cringe-worthy and I had no reason to think that 1930 would treat the Navajos any better.
(As a side note, the About the Author page of Sister Scarlet Mary actually says, “[Julia Peterkin] loves the Negro and understands him. She appreciates the simplicity of the minds of her dark-skinned friends, without sentimentalizing over them…and with the heart of a poet and the eye of a painter she has revealed the soul of a people whom civilization has never touched.” But I digress.)
Anyway, Laughing Boy is a whole lot better than Sister Scarlet Mary, in fact it’s good enough that I would recommend it to anyone interested in Navajo history.
Set in 1915, the story covers the meeting, courtship and marriage of Laughing Boy and Slim Girl. The two central characters are very different people Laughing Boy is at completely at home as a Navajo, optimistic, devout, confident and comfortable with his clan. Slim Girl is not so lucky. As a young child, she was taken away from her family to be educated in an American Indian boarding school set up by missionaries. The experience left her angry, reserved and ruined her sense of self. The tension driving the novel is a huge secret Slim Girl hides from Laughing Boy, and under that secret is another one even deeper.
Oliver La Farge clearly spent a lot of time around Navajos, and his depiction of the culture is rich with detail that feels true. What I liked best about this novel is the almost Zen-like message at its core There is beauty in everything, even suffering, and we can live the life we choose. I also really liked the complexity of the relationship between the two characters and the ways in which they changed each other for the better.
I held back some stars for awkward writing in parts and minor characters that seemed a little two-dimensional.
This novel written in 1920 is tragic and beautiful. I only rated it as 3 stars because I feel it does not hold up as well today as many other stories of that era. La Farge made every effort to present an authentic story about Native Americans, but despite his knowledge of the culture and his respect for Navajo traditions, he was not Navajo. While we may understand how wrong the injustices done by the "Americans" have been, we can't pretend to know the physical and emotional cost.
I had a wonderfully synchronistic event recently. While researching the family name of Perry in my genealogy, the name of Oliver Hazard Perry LaFarge came up as a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1930 for this novel, “Laughing Boy.” It was finished in 1929 for his Masters Degree at Harvard. His field was anthropology. I rushed to find if it on . Yes, surprisingly, there it was. I was so excited to be able to read it immediately, thanks to . A shorter version of his name is used, Oliver LaFarge. I bought it immediately and started reading. As I write this review, I am acutely aware of writing this review like in a time warp after my ancestor’s famous book written so many years ago, feeling honored to do so.

By the time I finished the second chapter, I knew I had found a fantastic page turner. I continued to read straight through, even all night, the only time I have ever done that and suffered a major withdrawal trying to return to the present the next day. Oliver was exceptionally talented at painting beautiful word scenes of the desert, a shack, a funny incident, so I felt I was there right in the story. I fully understand why it won the Pulitzer Prize and continues to be read today. A hard bound volume I came upon days later in a used book store, a 1963 Sentry Edition published by the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, states on its cover, “An American classic – the greatest novel yet written about the original American.” It is about the life of Native Americans at the time when Native children were being taken from their families and put in “American schools." It is not a political book. It is a love story, written by an anthropologist, who chose to write about an historical time in our country concerning the aftermath of what happens to these Native American children all grown up as they try to assimilate into society, but which society?

Venue for this book is the Four Corners area of the West and the Navajo lands. It is rich in reporting Navajo spirituality and mythology. An incredible love story will tug deeply at your heart strings. The girl is "American Schooled" trying to survive now that she is on her own. The handsome boy is as native a Navajo as you can get, with a sense of humor too. He struggles to understand the beautiful girl he has fallen in love with, also admired by other men. The two characters with different backgrounds are challenged learning to live together as their love continues to grow. She helps him to become a talented and well-known silversmith. He helps her to discover how to weave again, and she too becomes recognized for her talented weaving craft, which is like a meditation for her. It helps to heal her soul. As each struggles to grow and mature in the artistic skills and in their love, they walk in the beauty together. Quotations can be found throughout the book of the Navajo chants of walking in beauty. There are exciting actions throughout like horse races, survival happenings, and difficult heartaches as each uncovers some unexpected truths about who they really are. Their strong love, cemented in high values and absolute dedication to each other, outstandingly exemplifies how love can get you through life’s difficulties. Always they walk in beauty.

A ceremony of the Navajo culture told herein relates to today, their "Enemy Blessing," used to assist returning warriors to find their balance again. Psychologists are now studying this ceremony to apply to our own returning war veterans dealing with “moral injury.” It was fascinating for me to read this. I felt familiarity with this ancestor of mine through his writing. I would love to have met him. I could have. I was in my 20s when he died, if only I had known about him them. Growing up in Massachusetts in an area of Worcester, my grammar school stood on Native land and was called, "Tatnuck Grammar School," after the local Tatnuck tribe. My schooling years there were filled with Native American lore. My first boating experience was to learn to paddle an Indian canoe while singing the round with others, “Our paddles swift and bright, flashing like silver, swift as the wild goose flies, dip dip and swing, dip dip and swing.” Cape Cod, were we vacationed annually, is full of Indian lore and places with Indian names. I entered young adulthood with Indian jewelry, baskets, and a fascination with Indian mythology. “Laughing Boy” is so rich in colorful description of the Native American culture it brought back these childhood years, especially when referring to the silver work and weaving. Anyone interested in Native American stories will appreciate this. Besides, it is a darn good love story! Unforgettable.

Times have changed. Not many are alive now to report about the horror those children suffered by being taken from their homes to “American Schooling” and left to find their own way afterwards. It is wonderful to have this book documenting those times. Rough as they were for the many who lived through them, the fabric woven in this story never loses the positive thread of the Navajo love of their people’s culture, though some are good and some are bad (also seen here), and the beauty of their land in the West. Toward the end the boy, now a mature successful man even in difficult times that are part of the human condition states, “In beauty it is finished, in beauty it is finished, in beauty it is finished. Thanks.”

Reviewed for by “Easy Reader” July 2014