Rain is Not My Indian Name

Ragina Shearer
5653 Multicultural Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Book Review – Native American Literature

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Smith, Cynthia Leitich. 2001. RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME. New York, NY.
ISBN 10:0-688-17397-7


2. PLOT SUMMARY
This is a story of a fourteen year old girl of mixed Native American blood along with German and Irish. The story begins with the young girl, Rain and her life long friend Galen on New Years Eve as they playfully roam the neighborhood ending at N.R. Burnham Elementary. Here Galan presents Rain with a necklace for her birthday. They were both “…holiday babies with birthdays outside of the school calendar, and so people forgot about celebrating us. That’s why he’d promised to always remember my birthday, New Years Day, and I’d promised to always remember his, the Fourth of July.” After Rain’s mother had died Rain felt closer to Galen than ever, “Galen was the one person who always understood me, the one person I always understood.” As he tied the gift of her birthday necklace around her neck Rain “…realized it was the furthest thing from what I’d been expecting that it was the kind of gift a boy gets for his girl.” Her feelings of romance, normal for her age, were becoming revealed to her and he kissed her.

Galen was killed in an auto accident that evening. Rain kept to herself not even attending the funeral. She was close to her brother, his girl friend, and her grandfather but they all had life complications of their own. Her father was away in Guam in the service. Finally by the summer she found an interest in her heritage and began shooting photos of the Indian Camp for the local newspaper. She matured through this and a town scandal over the Indian Camp and began to accept her life and the reality of death.


3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS (INCLUDING CULTURAL MARKERS)
Rain is of mixed Native American blood, her mother is Muskogee Creek-Cheokee and Scots Irish and her father is Irish-German-Ojibway. She lives a typical young teen-age life in a small American town. She does not live on a reservation, but she makes reference to occasional trips to a powwow, such as when Aunt Georgia had taken her and Galen to a Powwow in Oklahoma, the summer before he died. In her journal writings about a trip with her mother she mentions her trip, “…with my grandparents, Aunt Louise, and Cousin Margo to picnics and powwows, to social and stomp dances.”

“At school, the subject of Native Americans pretty much never came up…” There was not a large majority of Native Americans and like many other American schools; Native Americans were only talked about along with Thanksgiving. Aunt Georgia, one of the Native Americans in the community had received town money to have a Native American camp where she could teach the children about their heritage. This was bringing political opposition by a prominent town member, Mrs. Owen. She wrote a letter to the editor which included “…is it the place of our city to finance a special program that serves only one small ethnic group?” Rain matures and takes a stand as she finds pride in learning about her own heritage.

This book would be good for reading with middle to upper grade students who were also dealing with death of someone close. Rain walks through her daily life dealing with daily situations, while inside she has the hurt of both her mother’s and her best friend’s deaths. It will help readers to realize the mourning may take some time and that is really ok. As Rain finally has strength to visit her mother’s grave she brings flowers, tells her mother of the family news and promises to always remember and share the stories she told her. Yet, she is still unable to go to Galen’s grave. “Finally, I left without stopping by Galen’s grave. The wound from losing Mama was deeper, but the one from losing Galen was still too fresh. Next time, maybe.” Reading about another young person needing time to heal can bring re-assurance to those who also need time to heal.

Rain realized she was changing at the beginning of the book as she admitted the changing of her feelings toward Galen in her journal. “Kissing Galen would mark my new year, my birthday, my new beginning.” In the end her maturity is revealed as she accepts the feelings of both the love for and the death of her beloved friend, Galen. “It was only one kiss. It wasn’t a deep kiss, a French kiss, the kind of kiss that redefines a teen life. It was pepperoni, snowflakes, spit, and rodeo dust…Sweeter because it didn’t taste like good-bye.”

Race, skin tone and hair are mentioned through out this book. “Queenie’s skin looked almost the same warm tone as Aunt Georgia….It was a well known fact that Queenie was the only black girl in the whole town.” The author also refers to Galen’s fair freckled skin and his golden hair along with the mention of Rain’s ivory skin and brown hair.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT (S)
HORN BOOK: “The engaging first-person narrative convincingly portrays Rain's grieving process and addresses the varying degrees of prejudice she encounters.”

KIRKUS REVIEW: “Her response to Galen's death is tied to her tentative explorations of her own mixed Native American and German/Irish heritage, her need and desire to learn photography and to wield it well, and the general stirrings of self and sex common to her age.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: “The sensitive yet witty narrator, 14-year-old Cassidy Rain Berghoff, grows up in a small Kansas town as one of the few people with some Native American heritage. That experience alone might challenge Rain, but Smith creates a welter of conflicts. Rain's mother is dead (she was struck by lightning), and as the novel opens, her best friend is killed in a car accident just after he and Rain realize their friendship has grown into romance.”

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: “The sensitive yet witty narrator, 14-year-old Cassidy Rain Berghoff, grows up in a small Kansas town as one of the few people with some Native American heritage. That experience alone might challenge Rain, but Smith creates a welter of conflicts. Rain's mother is dead (she was struck by lightning), and as the novel opens, her best friend is killed in a car accident just after he and Rain realize their friendship has grown into romance.”


5. CONNECTIONS
Great for ages 11-14 and for use in dealing with topics of heritage, prejudices, and death.


Other books of Native Americans in a modern day world
Smith. Cynthia Leitich. JINGLE DANCER. ISBN 10: 0-688-16242-8
Alexie, Sherman. THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN.
ISBN 10: 0-316-01368-4