Savage Conversations

(Paperback)

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May 1875: Mary Todd Lincoln is addicted to opiates and tried in a Chicago court on charges of insanity. Entered into evidence is Ms. Lincolns claim that every night a Savage Indian enters her bedroom and slashes her face and scalp. She is swiftly committed to Bellevue Place Sanitarium. Her hauntings may be a reminder that in 1862, President Lincoln ordered the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas in the largest mass execution in United States history. No one has ever linked the two eventsuntil now. Savage Conversations is a daring account of a former first lady and the ghosts that tormented her for the contradictions and crimes on which this nation is founded.

Reviews

Howes drama taps emotional undercurrents that course imperceptibly through conventional historical narratives. Publishers Weekly In May of 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln is confined to an insane asylum. There, she is haunted by a Savage Indian who scalps her nightly and sews her eyes open. In Howe's telling, the specter haunting the widowed First Lady is one of the thirty eight Dakota men, hanged in 1862 by her husband in the largest mass execution in American history. In reading this, I was blown away. Unmoored. Sent spiraling adrift on gusts of wind.Rachel S,Harvard Book Store Part fever dream, part extended meditation on madness, Howes Savage Conversations is a bracing commentary on the nature of guilt and grief. Historical Novel Society Savage Conversations takes place somewhere in between its sources, between sanity and madness, between then and now, between the living and the dead. It pushes past the limitations of textual sources for telling indigenous history and accounts of insanity. Barrelhouse Reviews An eerie mash-up that ties President Lincolns mass 1862 execution of 38 Dakota warriors to the hallucinations of Mary Todd Lincoln. City Pulse LeAnne Howes words are to savor, contemplate, and horrify.Savage Conversationsexplodes with the stench of guilt and insanity that undergirds the American story, whispered through a personal, familial, national, and supernatural drama revelatory in every sense. Howes uncanny images will long haunt readers, just as the Dakota 38 linger in land and memory, both offering a testament to the violent entanglements of past and present.Philip J. Deloria LeAnne Howes play Savage Conversations activates this space in history. She fills the wide-open gaps with a narrative of what could have been, makes the absences present in very intimate ways. Full Stop Savage Conversations invokes our own racial conflict and probes Americas psyche, its struggle to reconcile its colonialist values, indeed its white supremacy, with its multi-ethnic cultures and populations. . . . Through the masterly dramatic management of Mrs. Lincolns disturbing and chilling obsessions, Howe shows that there is no escape from the yesterdays paradigms of power without a true reckoning with the injustices that set the stage for our troubled social landscape. On the Seawall Howes book powerfully contributes to our understanding and re-thinking of a moment in time that we are still grappling with today. In the wake of recent movements to remove Confederate monuments as we work to present the truths of history, Howes book directs our attention to a violent event that has not been adequately acknowledged. Through experimental form, Howe refracts a moment of history that readers simply cannot forget, that they will inevitably carry with them long after reading the last page.The Carolina Quarterly This is a haunted poem. Howe gives us voices intimate, twisted, and deludedand yet relentlessly exact. Inside this drama in verse, a seething history uncoils. But do we meet a mad womans fantasy or someone more realHeid Erdrich Praise for LeAnne Howe Let her lead you into history, intrigue,comedy and comic insight, even mystery, yes, as she impels you and other readers toward decolonization with attitude! A very fine and fulfilling read.Simon J. Ortiz How does she do it CrossRocky Horror Picture ShowwithWar and Peacein a voice that sings Americas song as deeply as the best musical poetry of Walt Whitman But no, Howes voice is so utterly unique, comparisons cant do her justice.Susan Power

Author Bio

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, and filmmaker. Her most recent book, Choctalking on Other Realities, won the inaugural 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature in English at the University of Georgia, Athens.