Indian Girl

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny, and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges, and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood.

Jyoti is the “perfect” Indian American daughter: She stayed out of trouble, looked after her younger sisters, and married a man her parents approved of. So when her husband, Ashok, pushes her to quit her dream job as head chef to focus on conceiving, she obliges, knowing this will please her parents—only for Ashok to leave her when she cannot carry to term. Now unemployed, childless, and divorced, a disgrace to her Gujarati family, Jyoti books a ticket to Tuscany for the summer to visit her best friend (and fellow social outcast), Karishma.

Jyoti has always been the ideal second-generation Indian daughter. She stayed out of trouble, looked after her younger sisters and married a man her parents approved of. So when her husband, Ashok, forces her to quit her dream job as head chef of his family’s restaurant to focus on starting a family, she obliges. But despite Jyoti’s tireless efforts to provide children, when it becomes clear that she cannot carry a baby to term, Ashok leaves her. Jyoti’s new status as an unemployed divorcee is a disgrace to her family, and she flees New York to visit her best friend in Tuscany.

When 16-year-old Mytrae Meliana and her family emigrate from India to the US, she is determined to avoid the arranged marriage her family expects her to have, and to create her own destiny. But when she falls in love with an American man, her family drags the talented graduate student back to India and keeps her hostage.

In 1903, over 300 Indian children from across America lived at the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School in a remote, isolated valley in Montana. Among the children were a handful of teenage girls, many who had only lived in tepees. They quickly learned to play basketball and resoundingly crushed all opponents, including men's and women's university teams. After the games, the girls recited Shelley and Longfellow, played mandolins and violins, sang, danced, and pantomimed.

Indian Creek Massacre and Captivity of Hall Girls was written by Charles Martin Scanlan in 1915. The Indian Creek Massacre arose in 1832 at LaSalle County, Illinois, after a dispute about a settler-constructed dam that blocked fish from reaching a Native American village downstream. It’s a unique historical snapshot of early America centered around Sylvia and Rachel Hall, sisters who were the only survivors of the massacre and were abducted, as well as the story of Chief Shabona who was a member of the Ottowa and Potawatomi.

Three fun-loving Anglo-Asian sisters rule the roost since their mom died. They’ve got a reputation at school for being the coolest babes in town, and what they don’t need is an interfering Auntie-ji from India cramping their style. The girls decide the only way out of the problem is an arranged marriage - for their auntie.

Laxmi never paid much attention to the tiny hairs above her lip. But one day while playing farm animals at recess, her friends point out that her whiskers would make her the perfect cat. She starts to notice body hair all over - on her arms, legs, and even between her eyebrows. With her parents' help, Laxmi learns that hair isn't just for heads, but that it grows everywhere, regardless of gender.