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Reviewed by:
  • A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories
  • Lee Shenandoah Vasquez
Luci Tapahonso. A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008. 128 pp. Paper, $17.95.

In her sixth collection of poems and stories, 2006 Native Writers Circle Lifetime Achievement Award winner Luci Tapahonso creates a unique compilation filled with intimate family recollections that have given shape to her life and writing. Within A Radiant Curve Tapahonso presents a series of stories and poems that affirm the enduring relevance of Diné oral traditions and the importance of storytelling as integral components to family memory and continuance.

Tapahonso begins her stories with a dedication to her youngest grandchildren. She shares with them the origin story of the Diné people: "The first Holy Ones talked and sang as always / . . . They sang us into life" (lines 1, 6). The poet presents her memories—"long time ago stories," as she calls them—as explanations of the Diné way of life to her grandchildren. As a Salt Clan grandmother, part of her duty is sharing the traditions and stories of her people with the young ones, and the poet sets up the proper way to begin to do this in her first poem, "The Warp Is Even: Taut Vertical Loops." Weaving, an integral act in tribal continuance and the preservation of memory, helps Tapahonso to begin the old stories anew. She weaves for her grandchildren, carefully making taut vertical loops as she remembers her own mother, who once wove for her. In recalling these experiences, Tapahonso ensures that both her mother's and the poet's own memories are solidified in the creative process. Of equal significance, Tapahonso's weaving echoes the relationship between her people and the earth, setting their stories down with the new story of those for whom she weaves. Singing into her loom, Tapahonso invokes the image of her grandson: "I sing songs created for him, 'Whose little boy are you?' / Said I am grandma's boy. Grandma's little baby boy" (lines 40–41).

Tapahonso describes for her grandchildren the First Laugh ceremony, the [End Page 570] Hózhóójí (the Beauty Way), and the story of the Holy Twins to explain why her people perform ceremonies and tell stories at significant times in their lives. The poet urges her grandchildren to remember the words of elders and the Diyin Diné, the Holy People, because "we exist within the radiant curve of their care and wisdom" (19). Tapahonso is careful to recount stories from the perspectives of children in her poems "New Boots" and "Dawn Boy" and in so doing affirms them as integral beings in the progression of Diné life. The children's inquiries, playtime, and duties to both help and respect their elders resonate with the Salt Woman stories and the words of Dawn Boy in Tapahonso's poems. Through them, the children's experiences are recognized as integral and enduring elements of the family's way of life.

Vital to Tapahonso's collection of poetry and stories is the conveyance of generational knowledge and the importance of rituals and cycles that bring about continuance and blessing in the lives of those who uphold the sacred knowledge of ancestors. Tapahonso frequently engages stories that describe rituals that have been significant to both her own experience and the experiences of those who came before her. As she uses her poetry to affirm the young, the poet emphasizes the importance of reflection and the incorporation of generational knowledge into daily life. The central piece of the collection, the story "A Tune Up," is a title given to her by children. In the story Tapahonso describes the spiritual evolution of a Diné woman, Emma, who leaves her tribal community for a reservation school early in life. She later enters college, establishes a career, and starts a family. Although she never fully loses the knowledge and spiritual connections she has with her home community, Emma experiences feelings of conflict and dislocation as she progresses through her busy life. One evening, frightened by a strange phone call she receives at work, Emma returns home and begins the ritual of ná'neeskaadi, "sacred bread making." The age-old process of...

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