Description
Book SynopsisVoices of Cherokee Women is a compelling collection of first-person accounts by Cherokee women. It includes letters, diaries, newspaper articles, oral histories, ancient myths, and accounts by travelers, traders, and missionaries who encountered the Cherokees from the 16th century to the present. Among the stories told by these voices are those of Rebecca Neugin being carried as a child on the Trail of Tears; Mary Stapler Ross seeing her beautiful Rose Cottage burned to the ground during the Civil War; Hannah Hicks watching as marauders steal her food and split open her feather beds, scattering the feathers in the wind; and girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary studying the same curriculum as women at Mount Holyoke. Voices of Cherokee Women recounts how Cherokee women went from having equality within the tribe to losing much of their political and economic power in the 19th century to regaining power in the 20th, as Joyce Dugan and Wilma Mankiller became the first female ch
Trade Review
"In her spirited and well-sourced collection, Johnston...unfolds history through the voices of people who remembered terrible events....An academic account that respectfully resurrects long-dead voices from a people who still have a lot to tell us." - Kirkus Reviews"
"The totality of [the book's] haunting intimate recollections and excerpts is complex, nuanced, and powerfully resonant with a determination to preserve a precious heritage and identity ... The message is endurance and strength, a real sense of survival that encompasses both physical and spiritual realms ... Voices of Cherokee Women is a rare collection of refracted glimpses of Native American women [and] is offered as a tribute to women who endured through many reversals." - Nancy Lorraine from Midwest Book Review
"Rich with detailed personal remembrances, Voices of Cherokee Women is a wonderful honoring of [Cherokee women's ] complex and still evolving heritage." - Sandi Tomlin-Sutker from Western North Carolina Woman
