Arts & Entertainment
Finding Distant Drummers
Review by Sara White
 |
Ritta Baker, a 15-year-old Lakota Sioux, is at the center of Doe Tabor’s turbulent coming-of-age story that takes place at the close of the 1960s.
Ritta flees her home on a South Dakota reservation after tribal police beat and rape her and murder her elderly mentor. Hitching a ride from a busload of hippies, she sets out to find a safe place to hide. Along the way, she makes new friend, learns about ignorance and prejudice, and begins discovering the world outside the reservation.
Eventually, she ends up in Berkeley with her dog, sharing a tiny apartment with two activist college students involved in the Red Power movement. She watches with exhilaration as history is made with the occupation of Alcatraz, and begins to understand that she as an individual, and her people as a group, have the power to claim their land and their rights.
The novel is well written and engaging, and Ritta is easy to like. Her easy, nonjudgmental reactions to new people and situations make seeing the world through her eyes a pleasure. Ritta’s sexuality is a theme throughout the story as she discoveres her own desires in the wake of the brutal attack at the opening of the novel. A beautiful young woman, she is the object of interest for many, and we see her as she works through the fear from her earlier trauma. Her first desires are for men, but after a few tense scenes, her interests shift to women. She hardly seems to register this shift in attraction as unusual. Her desires clearly become a part of who she is, but she does not struggle with or claim a lesbian identity. She becomes only coincidentally involved in gay or lesbian community. Her group-identity politics are Indian, and everything else seems purely personal.
The author weaves historical events through the novel, educating without being overwhelming. She soberly depicts the dishonesty of the U.S. government and the resulting corruption on the reservations. Her account of the Alcatraz occupation brings the historical event alive. She visits the violence of unmoderated power again and again, almost, at times, to the point that it becomes predictable and tiresome.
The novel critiques power and the corruption that comes with it, and provides a message of hope and empowerment to those who are marginalized. Ritta’s survival is a triumph, particularly because she has kept her sense of power and hope intact, which keeps the overall effect of the book optimistic.
|
Do Drums Beat There by
Doe Tabor
New Victoria Publishers |