Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Dedication v
3. Contents vii
4. Introduction: Exquisite Vessels 1
5. Technique
6. Contemporary Creative Writing and Ancient Oral Tradition 23
7. Letter to a Just-Starting-Out Indian Writer – and Maybe to Myself 31
8. Funny, You Don’t Look Like (My Preconceived Ideas of) an Essay 39
9. Nizhoní dóó ‘a’ani’ dóó até’él’í dóó ayoo’o’oni (Beauty & Memory & Abuse & Love) 53
10. Fairy Tales, Trauma, Writing into Dissociation 62
11. Coiling
12. Tuolumne 73
13. I Know I’ll Go 80
14. Little Mountain Woman 84
15. Fear to Forget & Fear to Forgive: Or an Attempt at Writing a Travel Essay 89
16. Fertility Rites 100
17. And So I Anal Douche While Kesha’s “Praying” Plays from My Iphone on Repeat 103
18. The Great Elk 106
19. Plaiting
20. Real Romantic 115
21. The Trickster Surfs the Floods 119
22. The Way of Wounds 126
23. To the Man Who Gave Me Cancer 139
24. Self-Portrait with Parts Missing and/or Smeared 149
25. Critical Poly 100s 154
26. Twining
27. Pain Scale Treaties 169
28. Caribou People 173
29. Part One: Redeeming the English Language (Acquisition) Series 183
30. Apocalypse Logic 191
31. Women in the Fracklands: On Water, Land, Bodies, and Standing Rock 204
32. Goodbye Once Upon a Time 214
33. I Am Chopping Ivory or Bone 237
34. Blood Running 242
35. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground 246
36. Acknowledgments 257
37. List of Contributors 261