WHISKEY TENDER

With a father from the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo in what is now Arizona, and a Catholic mother, WHISKEY TENDER tells the story of Deborah Taffa's girlhood growing up both on, and off, her family's reservation.

Written in moving, lyrical prose, Taffa's memoir grapples with the struggle that has come to define her generation: the question of assimilation and of what, exactly, one must sacrifice to achieve the "American Dream." As the granddaughter of those forced, as children, to attend assimilationist boarding schools; as the daughter of parents encouraged to leave their reservation for job training in big cities throughout the American West, Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were worth making in order to get ahead. But as she grew older, and especially as she reached her own coming-of-age, Taffa began to question the promise passed down to her by her parents - and indeed by American society writ large: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, she would be rewarded; that America would honor its half of the bargain and allow her access to the "American Dream." Shot through with Taffa's unique brand of historical analysis, WHISKEY TENDER interrogates the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical, in pursuit of the "American Dream." A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Taffa earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Today, she is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) and has won awards from Tin House, MacDowell, the Ellen Meloy Fund, a Public Space, and others. Her writing has been published by The Rumpus, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, Huff Post, Prairie Schooner, Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and many more.