For November’s Skylarking Bookclub we offer you something a little different - Layli Long Soldier’s astonishing new book, We, an eye-poppingly gorgeous collection of poetry, essays, and artwork. There is going to be so much to talk about - please join us at 6:30 p.m. in the shop. Note that because of Thanksgiving, we will be meeting a week earlier than usual.

In We, Layli Long Soldier examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language. We is the first-person plural, the pronoun of inclusion in English. It is also Wé, the Lakota word meaning “blood”—what is shared and what is shed.

In this ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and her own visual artworks presented in full color, Long Soldier creates unique spaces of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”

We is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time.