front cover of Black Eagle Child
Black Eagle Child
The Facepaint Narratives
Ray A. Young Bear
University of Iowa Press, 1992

A candid, poetic account of childhood and young manhood through the eyes of a Native American, this vivid narrative is destined to become a central moral text for our time. Through the persona of Edgar Bearchild—a member of the Black Eagle Child Settlement—Ray A. Young Bear takes readers on an unforgettable “journey of words” as he documents grief and anguish countered by an abundance of humor, pride, and insight.

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front cover of Rock Island Hiking Club
Rock Island Hiking Club
Ray A. Young Bear
University of Iowa Press, 2001

The narrator in this latest collection of poems by Ray Young Bear is alter ego and spiritual seeker Edgar Bearchild, who balances the hapless polarities of life in the Black Eagle Child Settlement with wry humor, a powerful intelligence, and the occasional designer drug. Bearchild is forever infused with revelations both modern and ancient, forever influenced by tribal history, animism, supernaturalism, religion, and mythology.

Whether faced with tragedy or comedy, Bearchild lives in a world replete with signs and portents, from the Lazy-Boy recliner that visually accesses a faraway crime to the child's handprint that mysteriously appears on a frosty ladder. Edgar and his wife, Selene Buffalo Husband, and the other members of the Black Eagle Child Settlement create and recreate prophecies that “quietly wait and glow” in the “mythical darkness that would follow the stories.”

Poet, novelist, and performing artist Ray Young Bear is a tribal member of the Meskwaki Nation of central Iowa. He is the author of Winter of the SalamanderThe Invisible MusicianBlack Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives (Iowa, 1992), and Remnants of the First Earth.

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