Review by Deborah Locke
There is this saying that when a student is ready, a teacher will appear. With “Whiskey Tender A Memoir” by Deborah Jackson Taffa (HarperCollins 2024), when the right book appears with new perspectives for the reader, the reader will reflect, and grow.
Jackson Taffa (Quechan/Laguna Pueblo) takes us through the seasons of her youth from age 3 to 18, starting with family poverty on the Quechan (Yuma) reservation in southeastern California where her father, Edmond Jackson, worked three jobs to make ends meet. He attended welding school in Phoenix with assistance from the Bureau of Indian Affair Indian Relocation Act, and finally took a welding job in Farmington, New Mexico, located on the border of the Navajo Nation.
The family of five uproots from their home with its supportive family, cultural and historical ties to move to Navajo country and schools with mostly non-Indians. It’s here that Taffa’s mixed race identification is heightened, to a point where as a young elementary student in a Catholic school, she strives to gain acceptance from teachers by passing as white and burying her native heritage. Light-complected like her Latina mother, and academically gifted, the little girl excels at school to please the adults in her life.
The story goes on to reveal often painfully detailed highlights from Taffa’s elementary and middle school years. Woven throughout the book is a lot of American Indian history on assimilation campaigns by the U.S. government, the effects of boarding schools, generational trauma, and identification.
As a child, Taffa exists on a racial merry-go-round where in the course of a single day, she is accepted by classmates as white, by teachers as Latina or Native, and by her family as an enigma. Her parents do not understand why their intelligent, talented child grows to lose interest in sports, school activities and making good grades. She ages out of the Catholic school, starts a public school, and is attracted to the class rebels, the angry kids who only seem confident and assured. She wants to be cool, like the cool kids.
It’s here in the story that I offer a warning: if you have sublimated any painful years of your middle and early high school existence, this book will bring them back. Taffa cites example after example of mean kid activities like shunning, cruelty, violence, name calling and trips to the principal’s office.
In my view, she could have left some of that detail out. I didn’t need to know every thoughtless and stupid adolescent act. The early school years are followed by high school with the awkwardness of adolescent attraction to boys, beer, cars driven too fast, and late nights—all occurring under the eyes of her watchful and worried parents.
It’s the parents, mostly the dad, who bring grounding and sense to Taffa’s tumultuous life. In fact, Edmond Jackson, though flawed, is one of the best Native men you will ever learn from. No, he doesn’t present to his daughter a detailed litany of Indian history and culture. Much of what she learns about her people happens later through her own efforts. But he has a warm common sense, a deep protective love for his family, and a strong impulse to lift them from poverty. Jackson is the first Indian foreman at the plant where he started as a welder, and he is resented by some of the Navajo who work with him.
Still, he doesn’t care what others think of him. Taffa, on the other hand, seems to obsess about what everyone thinks. Jackson says to his daughter:
“If you’ve got one problem, that’s it. You worry too damn much about pleasing everyone. You never make choices for yourself. You’ve got to learn to stand alone. Have the courage to become an individual.”
That’s a pretty good summary of one of the book’s key points. Taffa is on a path to her authentic self, to a place where her opinion of who she is matters more than the opinion of anyone else. Earlier I wrote that the book helps you to see further and wider, the way a good teacher expands a student’s vision. I have reviewed a lot of books for The Circle over the years. This is the only book that made me cry. The ending chapters are that profound.
