Joseph Lee’s nonfiction debut considers what it means to be Native American.
On this episode of Fully Booked, Joseph Lee joins us to discuss Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity (One Signal/Atria, July 15). In a starred review, Kirkus calls his nonfiction debut “a searching and timely exploration of indigeneity and its many interpretations.”
Lee is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in the Guardian, BuzzFeed, Vox, and High Country News, among other outlets. He was a Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop and a Senior Indigenous Affairs Fellow at Grist. He earned an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Mercy University.
Here’s a bit more from our review: “Over the course of U.S.–Native American relations, too few people have remembered that the East Coast once abounded with Indigenous settlements. In the case of the Wampanoag, famed for their generous role in the first Thanksgiving, writes Lee, ‘we, the Aquinnah Wampanoag people, only own a small piece of the smallest town on…what is now Martha’s Vineyard—one of the most expensive and exclusive vacation destinations in the country.’ Owning land, Lee observes, is one of the principal ways that one can claim sovereignty over a place.…As Lee, of mixed Asian, European, and Wampanoag descent, explores the issue of sovereignty, he necessarily opens the door to the question of who qualifies to be Native American.…Lee travels widely across the U.S. and visits with Indigenous peoples from Oceania and South America to look at how such matters are addressed, concluding that ‘there are different ways of being Wampanoag and what works or is meaningful for someone might be different from the way I approach things.’”
Lee tells me how Nothing More of This Land came to encompass his personal experiences, as well as Indigenous perspectives from around the world, and he emphasizes the importance of conveying complex histories through a plurality of voices. We talk about people living modern lives on ancient land, his favorite parts of the book, the family photo that graces the cover, and much more.
Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.
EDITORS’ PICKS:
Pretty Girl County by Lakita Wilson (Viking)
Dawn by Marc Martin (Candlewick Studio)
Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin (Doubleday)
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie (Doubleday)
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:
Give First: The Power of Mentorship by Brad Feld
Prophetic Redemption by Paul Headworth
Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.