JoVonne Wagner
ICT
A memoir which follows the childhood of a Cherokee and Creek boy growing up in Oklahoma in the 70s showcasing the modern Native experience, is set to publish on Sept. 19.
Author, Eddie Chuculate, grew up in Oklahoma where he graduated from Muskogee high school. He began his writing career as a sports journalist when he was a senior and has since gone on to write for numerous news publications.
Now, Chucluate shared his motivation behind his new book, “This Indian Kid: A Native American Memoir,” with ICT that follows a young Chuculate through his middle school and high school years, growing up, playing baseball, fishing with his grandfather, and finding his calling in storytelling.
“There’s probably some Americans (that) still think stuff like that, like all Indians are on the reservation, they all hunt or they all have peace pipes, they all have long hair, et cetera,” the author said.
The experiences shared in his memoir aim to give readers a more diverse perspective of Indigenous people growing up in the 60s and 70s, in an effort to combat the “Pan-Indian” narrative.
The memoir, published through Scholastic Inc., is intended for a young adult audience, bringing in an education element from his childhood stories.
“Experiences of Native Americans are widely varied. You can’t just buttonhole or pigeonhole the experience,” he said. “There’s Natives in every state and all over, you know, from Pacific Northwest to Florida to Maine and everyone’s got a different circumstance, whether it be off or on the reservation.”
The book follows Chuculate’s childhood, from living with his maternal grandparents in a house in Hanna, on the outskirts of Muskogee, Oklahoma, to bouncing around from different cities and towns. He moved to multiple schools in a short time frame, which gave him insight into varied people’s lives, wealthy and not, Native, non-Native, urban and rural.
“Well, I just thought that the average experience is, you know, going to school, playing on sports teams, going to the lake, stuff like that. I figured anybody, any race could identify with that,” he said.
Childhood memories from his book encapsulate multiple lived experiences other people could relate to from their own adolescence, including his own trials and tribulations, he said.
From witnessing accounts of racism directed toward him or his friends to getting into trouble with one of his schools that lead to an expulsion, Chuculate reflects on the peers, friends and teachers who helped shape his path to success.
Through second chances and being persistent with his own education, his stories enforce the notion that circumstances don’t define a person’s entire life.
“I was kind of wanting to show like how the role of fate plays,” he said.
After reminiscing about his grandparents’ home, Chuculate shared his own takeaways after finishing his book and his own feelings of remembering the family that raised him.
“It’s kind of educational to you, yourself. Everyone, remembers scenes about their childhood, but when you spend like a year and a half, like I did, constantly thinking about it, every day you start to see some patterns develop and then you realize stuff like, wow, my mom, single mom worked all these jobs, stuff like that to become more appreciative of what your parents did for you,” Chuculate shared.
“You don’t think of that when it’s happening. You’re just a kid going to school, but when you’re an adult you just realize the sacrifices that your elders made for you and you just become more appreciative.”
The book is structured through chaptered short stories from his youth, and ends with him getting into sports writing though his softball coaches recruitment and journalism class. He went on to write for the Muskogee Phoenix, where he accumulated 226 bylines.
Since then, Chuculate has published his first book, an adult fiction story titled, “Cheyenne Madonna.” He had won a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University, and has even freelanced for ICT, then named Indian Country Today.
“This Indian Kid,” will be available to purchase on Sept.19 and has planned readings in Minnesota, Baltimore, Detroit and Arizona.
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