The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain—the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis’s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife’s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease. Louis is a writer of extraordinary courage and skill, and these powerful, moving poems, wrested from the harsh experience of the Rez and his own lonely struggle with a merciless illness, will awe their readers with their brilliance and desperate humanity.

By the end of the twentieth century, Adrian C. Louis had become one of the most powerful voices in the canon of Native American literature. His poetry and fiction have been widely read, anthologized, and translated. Skins, first published in 1995, is now introduced with a new foreword by David Pichaske, professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, and Louis's personal friend and colleague.It's the early 1990s and Rudy Yellow Shirt and his brother, Mogie, are living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the legendary Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. Both Vietnam veterans, the men struggle with daily life on "the rez." Rudy, a criminal investigator with the Pine Ridge Public Safety Department, frequently arrests his neighbors and friends, including his brother, who has become a rez wino.But when Rudy falls and hits his head on a rock while pursuing a suspected murderer, Iktome the trickster enters his brain.Iktome restores Rudy's youthful sexual vigor—long-lost to years of taking high blood pressure pills—and ignites his desire for political revenge via an alter ego, the "Avenging Warrior." In a violent act, the Avenging Warrior torches the local liquor store, nearly burning Mogie alive while he is hiding on the store's roof, plotting to steal booze. Although the brothers reconcile before Mogie dies, he gives the Avenging Warrior one final mission: go to Mount Rushmore and blow the nose off George Washington's granite face.In 2002, Skins made into a movie directed by Chris Eyre.

Lyman "Bean" Wilson, a half-breed Nevada Indian and middle-aged professor of journalism at Lakota University in South Dakota, is reassesing his life. The result is a string of family reconnections, sexual adventures, crises at work, pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies, and—through his membership in the secret Ghost Dancers Society—political activism, culminating in a successful plot to blow the nose off of the George Washington statue on Mt. Rushmore.

Tellin' It Like It Is offers a powerful introduction to Adrian C. Louis (1946–2018), one of the most unflinching Native American literary voices of the twentieth century. Drawing from a half-century of published writing—and including a few previously unpublished pieces—this collection captures the evolution of Louis's voice, worldview, and craft.Editor David Pichaske, a close friend of Louis in his later years, curates this volume with deep insight into both the public figure and the private man. Selections are arranged chronologically to trace Louis's transformation from a Nevada reservation teenager to a California hippie, a sixties hitchhiker, a Boston academic, a South Dakota reservation journalist, and finally, a Midwestern college professor.Louis's work immerses readers in reservation life, yet its critique reaches the broadest dimensions of American and human experience. To enrich understanding, the book includes literary reviews, scholarly essays (including one by a noted Polish critic), an interview with Louis, and his own reflections on literature and identity. A foreword by poet Bojan Louis provides further context for this essential collection.

The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain—the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis’s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife’s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease. Louis is a writer of extraordinary courage and skill, and these powerful, moving poems, wrested from the harsh experience of the Rez and his own lonely struggle with a merciless illness, will awe their readers with their brilliance and desperate humanity.

By the end of the twentieth century, Adrian C. Louis had become one of the most powerful voices in the canon of Native American literature. His poetry and fiction have been widely read, anthologized, and translated. Skins, first published in 1995, is now introduced with a new foreword by David Pichaske, professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, and Louis's personal friend and colleague.It's the early 1990s and Rudy Yellow Shirt and his brother, Mogie, are living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the legendary Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. Both Vietnam veterans, the men struggle with daily life on "the rez." Rudy, a criminal investigator with the Pine Ridge Public Safety Department, frequently arrests his neighbors and friends, including his brother, who has become a rez wino.But when Rudy falls and hits his head on a rock while pursuing a suspected murderer, Iktome the trickster enters his brain.Iktome restores Rudy's youthful sexual vigor—long-lost to years of taking high blood pressure pills—and ignites his desire for political revenge via an alter ego, the "Avenging Warrior." In a violent act, the Avenging Warrior torches the local liquor store, nearly burning Mogie alive while he is hiding on the store's roof, plotting to steal booze. Although the brothers reconcile before Mogie dies, he gives the Avenging Warrior one final mission: go to Mount Rushmore and blow the nose off George Washington's granite face.In 2002, Skins made into a movie directed by Chris Eyre.

Lyman "Bean" Wilson, a half-breed Nevada Indian and middle-aged professor of journalism at Lakota University in South Dakota, is reassesing his life. The result is a string of family reconnections, sexual adventures, crises at work, pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies, and—through his membership in the secret Ghost Dancers Society—political activism, culminating in a successful plot to blow the nose off of the George Washington statue on Mt. Rushmore.

Tellin' It Like It Is offers a powerful introduction to Adrian C. Louis (1946–2018), one of the most unflinching Native American literary voices of the twentieth century. Drawing from a half-century of published writing—and including a few previously unpublished pieces—this collection captures the evolution of Louis's voice, worldview, and craft.Editor David Pichaske, a close friend of Louis in his later years, curates this volume with deep insight into both the public figure and the private man. Selections are arranged chronologically to trace Louis's transformation from a Nevada reservation teenager to a California hippie, a sixties hitchhiker, a Boston academic, a South Dakota reservation journalist, and finally, a Midwestern college professor.Louis's work immerses readers in reservation life, yet its critique reaches the broadest dimensions of American and human experience. To enrich understanding, the book includes literary reviews, scholarly essays (including one by a noted Polish critic), an interview with Louis, and his own reflections on literature and identity. A foreword by poet Bojan Louis provides further context for this essential collection.