Pasadena Library Launches Native American Heritage Month Reading Initiative

The Pasadena Public Library has unveiled a comprehensive reading list featuring Native American authors and stories, aiming to promote cultural understanding during Native American Heritage Month.

The initiative offers titles available through the library that span multiple age groups and includes historical works, contemporary fiction, memoirs, and graphic novels exploring Indigenous experiences, histories, and contemporary issues.

“Reading about the lives and experiences of people is a great way to learn about diverse cultures,” library officials said in announcing of the program.

The 2023 collection features groundbreaking works like Caroline Dodds Pennock’s “On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe” (2023), which challenges traditional narratives by documenting how tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others discovered Europe through roles as enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, and traders.

Contemporary fiction offerings include Jessica Johns’ “Bad Cree” (2023), Nick Medina’s “Sisters of the Lost Nation” (2023), and Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s “Woman of Light” (2022), which follows a tea leaf reader navigating 1930s Denver while experiencing visions of her Indigenous homeland. The collection includes Kyle T. Mays’ “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States” (2021), exploring parallel oppressions and resistance of Black and Indigenous peoples.

Notable among the selections is Matika Wilbur’s “Project 562” (2023), documenting the author’s 2012 journey spanning 600,000 miles across 50 states to photograph and interview members of federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. “The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country,” notes the source material.

The library offers multiple formats, including audiobooks like Julian Aguon’s “No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies” available through Hoopla, and Stephen Graham Jones’ comic series “Earthdivers” as a Hoopla digital comic. Recent additions include Mona Susan Power’s “A Council of Dolls” (2023) and Michelle Porter’s “A Grandmother Begins the Story” (2023).

Readers can access complete reading lists through dedicated online guides at https://cityofpasadena.libguides.com/childrens_books/nativevoices for children’s selections and https://cityofpasadena.libguides.com/teenbooks/nativeamerican for teen recommendations.