Kathy Eckles Hooker

Voices of Navajo Mothers and Daughters Kathy Eckles Hooker

In a series of intimate, revelatory personal histories, Navajo grandmothers, mothers, and daughters in twenty-one families tell their stories. They open up about how they have been shaped by powerful cultural and historical forces--and by their love for each other. In these compelling, multi-generational oral histories, collected by a former teacher with profound admiration for Navajo culture, women talk about their experiences in their own words. As they do, their faces are captured in defining portraits. Woven into the women's stories are tales from Navajo history and culture, including Changing Woman, the coming-of-age ceremony (kinaaldá), the Long Walk, the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, boarding schools, sheep-herding, and blanket-weaving.