Skins

Rating:
Summary: Fatalistic realities of Indian/white culture relationships
Review: Admittedly, I couldn't put the book down and read it in a week. Even thought the novel is a work of fiction, it hits closer to the truth about Rez born and raised Indians than any other novel that "mystifies" Indians in the "butterflies and daisies" sense. Fact of the matter is, Rez life is hard, damn hard. There are many casualties in this novel. First and foremost: the dishonor caused by CENTURIES of abuse and the systematic extermination of Indians have produced a culture of people who love hard, live hard, drink hard, die hard, and hate even harder. And, the central common theme...even to those who refuse to see it is the Indian's hate of the white man. Rudy clearly has little use for most of the everyday characters he comes across. He has disdain for most of his fellow Indian police officers, his Indian boss and his Indian friends. He has no respect for Indian drunks, and loathes how the economically oppressed culture has turned Indian kids into violent drug users and thugs with little respect and no hope. Socrates surmised "all questions lead to God". On the Rez, all ills lead to the white man.

This hate is the saddest legacy that American's have cultivated from the abuses that have, and CONTINUE to be bestowed upon the red man. Most whites in America are not deserved of this hate. I think it is puzzling to many white American's why Indians continue to hate them, even though many white people have never even met an Indian, and are totally unaware of the abuses that continue to happen at the hands of the government, or greedy entrepreneurs.

The last insult of the book that disturbed me the most, was the consciences crafting of hatred and callous death and destruction to the most despised Indians that exist to most western tribes, whites of mixed Cherokee ancestry. Eastern Cherokee have long been the butt of jokes, ridicule and downright hatred because of their light skin, and often-light hair. The cruelest person on the reservation was represented by Wally Trudeau, a mostly white / part Cherokee (of suspect origin, and married to a full blood from the Rez) who uncaringly allowed the death of Mogie's best friend, Weasel Bear, by catching him in a steel animal trap during a blizzard in his back yard.

Wally was unremorseful and un-pitying. And, seemed not to respect tribal authority, nor the life of Indians. Eventually, he was killed in cold blood for some other deserved slight to another Indian. You could almost imagine the collective cheering by full blooded Indians everywhere. Though it is essential to any story to have a foil, I think Mr. Adrian Louis was making another of his now famous, calculated statements. Most Indians on the Rez are drunks. Most men/women on the Rez will cheat on you and leave you one day...All true Indians are deep red skinned with braids and live on a Reservation (even his wife Vivianne, who was Chippawa, had skin too light for Rudy's tastes). All others indians need not apply. This is further bolstered in the fact that when Mogie dies, he goes to heaven, "and there was not a single white face there".

Rating:
Summary: EASILY THE MOST INTERESTING BOOK I EVER READ!!!
Review: Adrian Louis is a genius! I could NOT put this book down! I even snuck it into work with me.
It is sad, funny, gut-wretching, sweet---it has it all! If you don't thoroughly enjoy this book--CHECK YOUR PULSE!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Fatalistic realities of Indian/white culture relationships
Review: Alexie, Harjo and Welch have already explained why this is such an excellent story. I'd like to add a few personal thoughts. The characters are truly memorable. Rudy is part Rhett Butler, Rocky, Thomas Magnum, and Vinnie Vega. Mogie, offers us a face, a history, and an explanation for his thousands of real life counterparts. Several of the female characters acknowledge the often downplayed or even ignored fact, that Indian women are sexual beings.

I found it hard to let Rudy go at the end of the book. As with Rhett, Rocky, and Thomas, I wanted to know what happened to him next. How he made out during the years that followed.

I am a woman and I did not see Rudy as misogynistic at all. I'm sure there are some who would call Rhett, Rocky, etc. the same thing. To some, the glass is ALWAYS half empty.

As of 1-01, the book is expected to be made into a film. I read it a second time when I heard who has been cast. Picturing Eric Schweig as Rudy, Graham Greene as Mogie, and Adam Beach as a younger Rudy in flashbacks, just intensified everything I felt about the characters during the first read. There ARE some "don't miss" parts of the book that will not make the film. I'd highly recommend reading the book while you wait to see the perfectly cast film.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book, bound for the screen.
Review: Alexie, Harjo and Welch have already explained why this is such an excellent story. I'd like to add a few personal thoughts. The characters are truly memorable. Rudy is part Rhett Butler, Rocky, Thomas Magnum, and Vinnie Vega. Mogie, offers us a face, a history, and an explanation for his thousands of real life counterparts. Several of the female characters acknowledge the often downplayed or even ignored fact, that Indian women are sexual beings.

I found it hard to let Rudy go at the end of the book. As with Rhett, Rocky, and Thomas, I wanted to know what happened to him next. How he made out during the years that followed.

I am a woman and I did not see Rudy as misogynistic at all. I'm sure there are some who would call Rhett, Rocky, etc. the same thing. To some, the glass is ALWAYS half empty.

As of 1-01, the book is expected to be made into a film. I read it a second time when I heard who has been cast. Picturing Eric Schweig as Rudy, Graham Greene as Mogie, and Adam Beach as a younger Rudy in flashbacks, just intensified everything I felt about the characters during the first read. There ARE some "don't miss" parts of the book that will not make the film. I'd highly recommend reading the book while you wait to see the perfectly cast film.

Rating:
Summary: true believeing
Review: Although this book hit home in all the problems of society, (ie, alcoholism, abuse, etc) there was some good indian humor. Being raised on a "rez" I was able to relate to the story. Some of the characters in the book are on my rez. Recommend it to all.

Rating:
Summary: wow.
Review: hey, Alexie is fine, but this guy is the real goods. I've read every contemporary Native author there is, and Mr. Louis has nailed the sugject of "rez" indians like no other. I was overcome with a sense of the desperation and the struggle, moved by the lives of all the major characters, and stunned by the brutal honesty of the book. I can't wait for Mr. Louis' next novel. (and if you're looking for other excellent novels with similar themes, try :"Green Grass, Running Water" and "medicine River" by Thomas King, and, of course James Welch's novels.

Rating:
Summary: Straight from the heart of the rez . . .
Review: Poet, short story writer, and former journalist, Adrian Louis presents a harshly comic vision of Indian life in this novel set on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota. He immerses the reader in a compelling mix of Indian and white cultures and the resulting ambiguities, competing worldviews, and conflicted values.

Rudy, the Indian cop, portrays these confusing conflicts beautifully, representing both the law in his tribal police uniform and vigilante justice in his blackface and pantyhose mask. Revealing other dimensions of Rudy's confusion, Louis explores his relationship to the women in his life. Married and estranged from his wife, Rudy indulges his growing attraction to his cousin's wife, Stella, while he carries on with other men's wives as well. Meanwhile, afflicted with hypertension, he takes meds that affect his sexual performance, and much of the novel traces the rising and falling cycles of his libido, all of which are unpredictable and seemingly under the spell of forces beyond him. It is significant that Iktomi, the trickster spirit and shape-shifter, is a central theme in the novel, for appearance and reality, wisdom and stupidity, pride and shame, love and rage are all in a continuing dance for dominance.

Also at the center of the story is Rudy's relationship with his alcoholic older brother, Mogey. While casting an unblinking eye on the devastating impact of alcohol consumption on the reservation, Louis both condemns and forgives those who seek oblivion in the bottom of the bottle. In his hands, Mogey is a wonderful creation. While there are vague allusions to the grim effect of two tours of duty in Vietnam, Louis doesn't excuse Mogey for choosing his path of self-destruction. Yet through his brother Rudy, the reader can begin to understand the deep love possible for someone unable to resist the pull of despair.

This book is not for everyone, as some of the reviews already posted here indicate. However, I recommend it highly for what it has to say about the Indian nations - in their own voices and without the moralizing or sentimentality of those who have never walked in their shoes. Also worth watching is the film "Skins" (2002, available on DVD), which is based on the book.


Rating:
Summary: "Brilliant"
Review: This is a hardcore book of life on the rez. It is so accurate that I can only catorgize Louis's writting as "Brilliant". I highly recommed this book and guarentee that this will leave you craving for more!

Rating:
Summary: "Brilliant"
Review: This is a hardcore book of life on the rez. It is so accurate that I can only catorgize Louis's writting as "Brilliant". I highly recommed this book and guarentee that this will leave you craving for more!

Rating:
Summary: _Skins_ detracts from its misogynistic tendencies
Review: _Skins_, a first novel by Adrian C. Louis is at once compelling as it is repulsive. It begins with Rudy Yellow Shirt's misshap in an outhouse and being bitten by a black widow on his testicles as a young man. Keep this image in mind as his story progresses from the traumatized child who is at the mercy of his brother's humiliating laughter, through the adult policeman who makes an attempt to justify his womanizing by blaming his newly awakened libido on another "accident." The Siouian trickster figure Iktomi is blamed both for the bite on his testicles and the fall that causes Rudy to turn into the "Avenging Warrior", a womanizing, rapist who lusts after highschool girls who steals his cousin's wife. It is difficult to suspend one's belief that this concoction of coincidence passes for a plot that basically follows the exploits of a rather adolescent-like Rudy Yellow Shirt as he goes from he bed of his wife to his cousin's wife. Along the way, in his thwarted efforts to keep the locals from drinking themselves to death, he sets a liquor store, with his pathetic, alcoholic brother sleeping on the roof, on fire. One tragedy spawns another as his brother recovers from his burns, Rudy is struck by his memory of watching Mogie molest his mother while she was passed out drunk. Rudy's inappropriate response to his compounded traumas is to go on a fornicating spree, and to force himself on his ex-wife on the day she presents him with divorce papers. This is a particularly distasteful novel that detracts again and again from it's thoroughly misogynistic bent and feeds readers a highly unrealistic view of the American Indian world that is set on destroying itself. The character development of Rudy Yellow Shirt as a tramatized child, teen, and adult creates the portrayal of a pathetic man with high blood pressure who is overweight and who tries to justify though incredible means male menopause at its worst. We see, for example, through the eyes of this personna a sexualized glimpse of him lusting after high school girls, but are detracted from holding that image long enough to realize what has happened. Our view is shifted to Mogie, drunk and hanging out, or other immediate distractions that occur so quickly that the man in his car is forgotten. The rape scene is most disturbing in that it is told from the point of view of the narrator who makes an attempt to garner the sympathy of the reader with the illusion of repentance and Rudy's determination to win Vivienne back. She is viewed through Rudy's eyes. Readers are instructed on how to take her in: what she is wearing is described by the narrator in terms of what he likes, which includes his lustful preoccupation with her body movements. When we are given details of Rudy's rape of Vivienne--like a practiced abuser--Rudy is repentent. Rudy's description of having sex with his cousin's wife is even less devoid of human compassion and there is not evidence that he loves this woman as he claims. _Skins_ repulses as it spins its web of distraction from its misogynistic theme and comes off as a whining tale of a kid who held a grudge against the female trickster Itomi and his mother and took it out on women the rest of his life.