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Calling for a Blanket Dance (2022)Description / Buy at Amazon

Oscar Hokeah is a literary fiction author from Oklahoma that is best known for his 2022 published novel “Calling for a Blanket Dance.”

The author went to the University of Oklahoma, where he got his master’s degree in English majoring in Native American Literature.

He also went to the Institute of American Indian Arts from where she graduated with a creative writing BFA minoring in Indigenous Liberal Studies.

For his work, he was awarded the Truman Capote Scholarship and through the Taos Summer Writers Conference won the Native Writer Award.

Hokeah’s work has been featured in several prestigious publications including Red Ink Magazine, World Literature Today, Surreal South, American Short Fiction, Yellow Medicine Review, and South Dakota Review.

As a literary fiction author interested in regionalist Native American fiction, Hokeah likes to explore multicultural, transnational, and intertribal aspects within the Lawton and Tahlequah communities in Oklahoma.

These are the tribal circles in which grew up and still lives. He happens to have Kiowan heritage from his mother and is a fully-fledged member of the Cherokee nation courtesy of his father.

For Oscar Hokeah, the journey toward the publication of his debut had many ups and downs. “Quinton Quetone” the earliest chapter was written in 2008 under the title “Got Per Cap.”

At this time, Hokeah was a BFA Program student then studying at the Institute of Amerian Indian Arts. He decided to write the work as a means of capturing what it was like for a Kiowa to get their per cap money.

This was a uniquely Native experience in which people were glad to get what they called per cap check from the tribe. He then revised the title calling it “Our Day.” It was under this title that the work was finally published in 2010 in American Short Fiction.

It had been a journey that had started more than 14 years earlier. Hokeah would then pen “Time Like Masks,” a short story that in 2011 was published in South Dakota Review. This is what he ultimately made into “Hayes Shade.”

Once he penned these two stories, he began thinking of penning a novel similar to Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

Given that Oscar Hokeah just could not get into a groove to write and complete her novel, there were many ups and downs over this time.

When she was doing her post-graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma, she was afflicted with writers’ block and hence it was not until after her graduation in 2012 that she got back to adding more stories.

After pulling together several short stories that he titled “Reflections on the Water,” he started shopping them around to agents. But there was hardly any interest and so in 2013, he stopped writing as he gave up defeated.

For several years, Oscar did not write anything until he had a work situation that played out like a movie and thought it would make for an interesting story.

It was from several reworkings of “Reflections on the Water” that he finally penned what would become “Calling for a Blanket Dance.”

Oscar Hokeah has had several influences in the writing of his works including the likes of Momaday and Alice Munro.

Momaday has been a very significant influence on his writing. He learned a lot from the character “Able” in the novel “House Made of Dawn” which taught him how to write about a character while wrapping an era around them.

He also likes how Momaday effortlessly and beautifully lays out cultural elements for the reader. He learned how to not think too hard in the application of culture and instead take facts, explore them and then put them on paper as they are.

Another seemingly strange influence is the Canadian author Alice Munro. This was quite odd since he is a Mexican/Native boy from Oklahoma.

He often finds himself trying to pen his works like Munro when he goes back to rework sentences and paragraphs.

Lastly, is the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who taught him all about writing atmospherically.

Oscar Hokeah’s novel “Calling for a Blanket Dance” is a novel told from varying perspectives. The work follows the life and times of Ever Geimausaddle and the several voices in his family as they work through many challenges.

His father is unlucky enough to get kidney failure which results in disability even as his mother struggles to keep her job while caring for her hubby.

They also have to deal with the constant resettlement of the family while Ever rages at all the instability that is happening all around them. In the meantime, his relatives have been having all manner of ideas about who he should be and who he is.

His Cherokee grandmother believes that the only way the family can find security is if they move across the state. His dying father has been hoping that he can reconnect with his tribal heritage by engaging in gourd dances.

Since he is fast becoming an adult, he is also facing the pressure of not only saving himself but also taking care of the next generation.

It is an uplifting, heartbreaking and honest story of how Ever Geimausadle finds his way home, even without being given a place to start with.

“Our Dance” by Oscar Hokeah is the story of two cousins one too serious and the other high-spirited.

At the opening of the story, the Oklahoma-based Kiowa Tribe has just granted them a lump sum. With their pockets full, they take tentative steps towards adulthood and learn in both cringing and comical ways.

The story is told from the perspective of both cousins who provide a lot of laughs as we get to know about the Comanche and Kiowa communities from which they come.

Oscar Hokeah writes a hilarious tale that will have his readers in stitches. Nonetheless, it is not all about humor, as he explores all manner of serious themes such as the strength that often permeates most tribal societies.

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