A Radiant Curve

Poems and Stories

Luci Tapahonso

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780816527090, 9780816527083
• eBook ISBN: 9780816547951
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In this sixth collection of stories and verse, award-winning writer Luci Tapahonso finds sacredness in everyday life. Viewing a sunset in a desert sky, listening to her granddaughter recount how she spent her day, or visiting her mother after her father's passing, she finds traces of her own memories, along with echoes of the voices of her Navajo ancestors. The collection also includes an audio CD of the author reading aloud and her voice is warm and inviting, like the "simmering soup and blue corn meal" of her childhood.

These engaging words draw us into a workaday world that, magically but never surprisingly, has room for the Diyin Dine'é (the Holy People), Old Salt Woman, and Dawn Boy. When she describes her grandson's First Laugh Ceremony—explaining that it was originally performed for White Shell Girl, who grew up to be Changing Woman—her account enriches us and we long to hear more. Tapahonso weaves the Navajo language into her work like she weaves "the first four rows of black yarn" into a rug she is making "for my little grandson, who inherited my father's name: Hastiin Tsétah Naaki Bísóí."

As readers, we find that we too are surrounded by silent comfort, held lovingly in the confident hands of an accomplished writer who has a great deal to tell us about life.

Table of contents

• Contents
• The beginning was mist
• The warp is even: taut vertical loops
• The Holy People lived here
• A Radiant Curve
• I Remember, She Says
• Old Salt Woman
• New Boots
• The Holy Twins
• Festival of the Onion
• Far Away
• I bought an old ts’aa
• That American Flag
• A Blessing
• Late This Morning
• The Canyon Was Serene
• Long ago
• A Tune-Up
• Red Star Quilt
• Journey of Turquoise
• Náneeskadí
• Near-to-the-Water
• Dawn Boy
• Tomorrow I will drive to Shiprock
• Tsílii
• Elegy for My Younger Sister
• K-Tag Ceremony
• The round-roof hooghan
• The Way to Tsé Bit’a’í
• We must remember
• Acknowledgments