Books for Native American Heritage Month

By Coll Rowe | October 5 2023 | LiteratureHistoryNative American

In celebration of Native American Heritage Month this November, Penguin Random House Education is highlighting the stories of our authors who represent the Indigenous Experience. Using #StoriesoftheLand, #NativeAmericanbooks, and #Indigenousreads, join us in putting a spotlight on the rich and diverse stories showcasing the important contributions and experiences of Native people.

Here is a selection of titles that we encourage you to share with your students this month and beyond:

Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann
978-0-307-74248-3
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 
$17.00 US
Apr 03, 2018
Paperback
416 Pages
Vintage
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Native America from 1890 to the Present
David Treuer
978-0-399-57319-4
"Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPRA New York Times bestseller: The sweeping history--and counter-narrative--of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present.
$18.00 US
Nov 05, 2019
Paperback
528 Pages
Riverhead Books
Project 562
Project 562
Changing the Way We See Native America
Matika Wilbur
978-1-9848-5952-5
A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes.
$50.00 US
Apr 25, 2023
Hardcover
416 Pages
Ten Speed Press
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
Kyle T. Mays
978-0-8070-0699-3
The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America
$18.95 US
Nov 15, 2022
Paperback
272 Pages
Beacon Press
There There
There There
Tommy Orange
978-0-525-43614-0
National Bestseller
$17.00 US
May 07, 2019
Paperback
304 Pages
Vintage
American Indian Stories
American Indian Stories
Zitkala-Sa
978-1-9848-5421-6
A groundbreaking Lakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into 19th century white society and her mission to preserve her culture.
$15.00 US
May 21, 2019
Paperback
160 Pages
Modern Library
Canyon Dreams
Canyon Dreams
A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation
Michael Powell
978-0-525-53468-6
Now in paperback, the moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and family, but also the greater, unique obstacles facing Native Americans living on reservations.
$18.00 US
Jun 29, 2021
Paperback
272 Pages
Blue Rider Press
No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies
No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies
A Lyric Essay
Julian Aguon
978-1-66260-163-7
A Michelle Obama Reach Higher Fall 2022 reading list pickA Library Journal "BEST BOOK OF 2022""Aguon’s book is for everyone, but he challenges history by placing indigenous consciousness at the center of his project . . . the most tender polemic I’ve ever read." —Lenika Cruz, The Atlantic "It's clear [Aguon] poured his whole heart into this slim book . . . [his] sense of hope, fierce determination, and love for his people and culture permeates every page."—Laura Sackton, BookRiot
$23.00 US
Sep 13, 2022
Hardcover
128 Pages
Astra House
Carry
Carry
A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
Toni Jensen
978-1-9848-2120-1
A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.
$18.00 US
Sep 21, 2021
Paperback
304 Pages
Ballantine Books
On Savage Shores
On Savage Shores
How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe
Caroline Dodds Pennock
978-1-5247-4926-2
A landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492
$32.50 US
Jan 24, 2023
Hardcover
320 Pages
Knopf
We Refuse to Forget
We Refuse to Forget
A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power
Caleb Gayle
978-0-593-32960-3
A landmark work of Black and Native American history that reconfigures our understanding of identity, race, and belonging and the inspiring ways marginalized people have pushed to redefine their world.
$18.00 US
Jun 06, 2023
Paperback
272 Pages
Riverhead Books
Reclaiming Two-Spirits
Reclaiming Two-Spirits
Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America
Gregory Smithers
978-0-8070-0346-6
A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.
$29.95 US
Apr 26, 2022
Hardcover
368 Pages
Beacon Press
Dog Flowers
Dog Flowers
A Memoir, an Archive
Danielle Geller
978-1-9848-2041-9
A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history.
$17.00 US
Apr 12, 2022
Paperback
272 Pages
One World
Bad Cree
Bad Cree
A Novel
Jessica Johns
978-0-385-54869-4
In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.
$27.00 US
Jan 10, 2023
Hardcover
272 Pages
Doubleday
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Native America from 1890 to the Present
David Treuer
978-0-399-57319-4
"Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPRA New York Times bestseller: The sweeping history--and counter-narrative--of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present.
$18.00 US
Nov 05, 2019
Paperback
528 Pages
Riverhead Books
Fresh Banana Leaves
Fresh Banana Leaves
Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science
Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.
978-1-62317-605-1
A 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & TechnologyAn Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn't working--and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.
$17.95 US
Jan 18, 2022
Paperback
256 Pages
North Atlantic Books
Woman of Light
Woman of Light
A Novel
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
978-0-525-51133-5
A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina
$18.00 US
Apr 18, 2023
Paperback
352 Pages
One World
Spirit Run
Spirit Run
A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land
Noé Álvarez
978-1-64622-053-3
In this New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, the son of working-class Mexican immigrants flees a life of labor in fruit-packing plants to run in a Native American marathon from Canada to Guatemala in this “stunning memoir that moves to the rhythm of feet, labor, and the many landscapes of the Americas” (Catriona Menzies-Pike, author of The Long Run).
$16.95 US
Mar 02, 2021
Paperback
240 Pages
Catapult
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
Alicia Elliott
978-1-61219-866-8
A bold and profound meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America from an award-winning Haudenosaunee writer
$19.99 US
Aug 04, 2020
Paperback
256 Pages
Melville House
Heart Berries
Heart Berries
A Memoir
Terese Marie Mailhot
978-1-64009-160-3
A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest—this New York Times bestseller and Emma Watson Book Club pick is “an illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience . . . at once raw and achingly beautiful (NPR).
$16.95 US
Apr 09, 2019
Paperback
160 Pages
Counterpoint
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