VIRTUAL EVENT: URSULA PIKE - An Indian Among Los Indígenas

Tuesday, April 27, 2021 - 6:00pm
Free
Virtual Event
An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir By Ursula Pike Cover Image
$26.00
ISBN: 9781597145275
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Heyday Books - April 6th, 2021

In conversation with Michael Noll

EVENT GUIDELINES

  • Digital Doors Open at 5:45PM CDT
  • Event Begins at 6:00PM CDT
  • NOTE: Because this is a virtual event that will be hosted on Zoom, you will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing and sufficient Internet access. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.


ABOUT AN INDIAN AMONG LOS INDIGENAS

A gripping, witty memoir about indigeneity, travel, and colonialism

When she was twenty-five, Ursula Pike boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her term of service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karuk Tribe, Pike sought to make meaningful connections with Indigenous people halfway around the world. But she arrived in La Paz with trepidation as well as excitement, “knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had also claimed they were there to help.” In the following two years, as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to boiling point, she began to ask: what does it mean to have experienced the effects of colonialism firsthand, and yet to risk becoming a colonizing force in turn?

An Indian among los Indígenas, Pike’s memoir of this experience, upends a canon of travel memoirs that has historically been dominated by white writers. It is a sharp, honest, and unnerving examination of the shadows that colonial history casts over even the most well-intentioned attempts at cross-cultural aid. It is also the debut of an exceptionally astute writer with a mastery of deadpan wit. It signals a shift in travel writing that is long overdue.


ABOUT URSULA PIKE

Ursula Pike is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work won the 2019 Writers' League of Texas Manuscript Contest in the memoir category, and her writing has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, World Literature Today, and Ligeia Magazine. She has an MA in economics, with a focus on community economic development, and was a Peace Corps fellow at Western Illinois University. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1994 to 1996. An enrolled member of the Karuk Tribe, she was born in California and grew up in Daly City, California, and Portland, Oregon. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.

ABOUT MICHAEL NOLL

Michael Noll is the author of The Writer's Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction. His short stories have been published widely, including in The Best American Mystery Stories. He works as the Community Schools Coordinator at Peñasco ISD in Northern New Mexico.


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