Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir

In her first book, Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes powerfully recounted the story of coming back to Juneau and to her Tlingit home after many years of wandering. The Tao of Raven takes up the next and in some ways more interesting question: once the exile returns, then what? Using motifs from the story Raven and the Box of Daylight to deepen her narration and reflection, Hayes expresses an ongoing frustration and anger at the obstacles and prejudices still facing Alaska Natives in their own land, but also recounts her own story of attending and completing college in her fifties and becoming a professor and a writer. Now seventy years old and thinking very much of the generations who will come after her, Hayes speaks for herself but also has powerful things to say about the possibilities and complications of her Native community. Ernestine Hayes is assistant professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast.