Shards of Silence by Brian Lee Young
Where do I begin? My cultural book club I joined at school picked this book for the month of September. It is a young adult novel that truly lets its audience know about Navajo culture. From the first chapter, you learned that our main character, Derek is beyond smart and has achieved enough accolades to qualify for a prestigious boarding school. Indigenous populations for many years were forced into religious based boarding schools so this creates quite a divide in his family. As he learns more about his grandmother and great grandmother's experiences at boarding school, he understands why they are stressed for him to willingly go. Each chapter starts with the Navajo language. One insight that I purely enjoyed was that every older woman in your life as an auntie or grandmother. It was reiterated that family is more than just blood ties. I was overcome with emotion as he was telling his story about what school was like with all the white kids at the boa...