30 Best Books by Native American and Indigenous Authors to Add to Your Bookshelf
These must-reads span across all categories.
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November is Native American Heritage Month, celebrating the proud culture and history of Native Americans and Indigenous people in our country. But any month is a good month to read one of these dynamic books by Native American and Indigenous authors.
Filled with heartbreak and humor in turns, these reads highlight the struggles facing the communities, and the power and resilience of Native people and their cultures. They range from nonfiction to poetry to psychological thrillers, with a title for every kind of reader.
Whether you want to celebrate your own identity, learn more about Indigenous experiences or just dive into a good book, these picks are perfect for you.
What is the correct terminology? In the U.S., the most common term is “Native American,” but many people use or prefer “Indigenous” or “American Indian.” On its website, the National Museum of the American Indian states that “Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name.” Recognizing specific tribes and the differences between them honors the rich legacy of indigenous culture in our nation. Make it a habit to ask what term or tribe name a person prefers.
In this mythological thriller, Anna, a young Native girl, starts investigating missing women from her reservation when her own little sister disappears. But there are strange things happening around the casino, and an ancient entity from tribal myth seems to be haunting her steps…
Traumatized by their years at a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie cling to each other when they're finally released as teens and find themselves in East Vancouver, trying to figure out what to do next. Their paths are, by turns, dangerous, frightening and secretive in this touching story about coming to terms with a past you didn't deserve and creating a future you do.
As Hurricane Katrina gathers over the gulf, so do the tensions in a family that's already struggling in poverty. Try to remember to breathe as the story rushes towards its dramatic conclusion. While every book Jesmyn Ward writes is a triumph, this searing National Book Award is a great place to start if you're not familiar with her work.
Funny and heartbreaking, this YA book is many readers’ first introduction to Native literature. When high schooler Junior branches out from his reservation to transfer into an all-white school, he expects it to be anything but kind. However, as he starts to make friends, he grapples with what his identity looks like at his new school and then back home on his reservation.
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Natalie Diaz’s sophomore poetry collection made waves for its stinging lyricism and post-colonial look at love and Native identity. An “anthem of desire against erasure,” it unearths and illuminates the historic wrongs done to Indigenous peoples, compassionately bringing them into the light to embody a better future.
A Mi’kmaq family works as seasonal blueberry pickers in Maine, but faces tragedy when their four-year-old daughter, Ruthie, mysteriously disappears. As the family struggles for years with what happened, Norma, a young girl, has been troubled by strange dreams that feel "more like memories", may have an answer.
In this volume, Native botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer combines Indigenous beliefs and ecological consciousness. She highlights the reciprocal relationship between all things, and the lessons we can learn from nature by combining science and traditional wisdom to learn how to truly listen to the world.
This poignant and moving book follows three generations of Native women and their treasured dolls: Cora, born in 1888 and shipped off to a brutal boarding school to be "civilized;" Lillian, born in 1925, who endures unspeakable horrors inflicted on her by the nuns running the "Indian school" she attends; and Sissy, born in 1961, whose mother's unpredictable anger and mercurial moods keeps her on the edge of danger. Told through alternating perspectives and by turns touching, heartbreaking and even a little scary, this book reminds us of the importance of family and history.
Kit, a young Cherokee girl, gets torn away from what's left of her family and sent to a Christian boarding school just when she's most vulnerable. There, she suffers horrifying abuse but finds solace in her journal, where she records what happens to her and what she remembers about her past. It's a historical reckoning with a hint of mystery that keeps the plot past-your-bedtime propulsive.
Ghosts, monsters and things that go bump in the night abound in this spooktacular collection of scary stories from Indigenous and Native authors. Whatever your preferred flavor of scariness, there’s a story here that will keep you awake long after you’ve turned off the lights.
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This big-hearted novel tells the stories of Justine―a mixed-blood Cherokee woman― and her daughter, Reney, after Justine's father abandons them and they seek a better life in 1980s oil-boom Texas. What awaits them is a world that wants to strip them of their culture and their will to survive, coming from both natural and human-driven forces.
Get ready for spooky season with this new novel about the importance of family, what it means to be haunted and how our past informs our future. Oh, and there's lots of heavy metal, dive bars and scenes so gritty, you can feel them between your back teeth. Crack open a cold one, pull on a well-worn band T-shirt and get ready for some spine tingles.
Most histories of our country are told from the white colonizers' perspectives, just like almost all historical accounts comes from the point of view of the winners. In this beautiful book, we learn about the lives, fates, hopes and dreams of the Native people instead.
These searing, devastating and often darkly funny stories introduce us to a community of Native people living on a Maine Penobscot reservation. There's family tragedy, battling drug dependency and poverty, but we also meet plucky children, adults who survive against all odds and an abiding, affecting love.
Memoir fans, look no further than this beautiful elegy for the author's lost parents that explores trauma, family and a fresh perspective on memory and how much of it we can really trust. It's not a light read, but it is an important one.
After Luz's brother is run out of town by a violent white mob, she's left to navigate 1930s Denver by herself. But before long, she begins to see visions of her ancestors and their lives in the nearby Lost Territory, bearing witness to their struggle, perseverance and how important it is to ensure those stories don't die with her.
History buffs won't want to miss this one. It's a balance of memoir and reportage that spans the history of Native American people's rich and varied cultures from first contact with white settlers, and how degradations like land seizures, massacres, forced assimilation and more gave rise to uniquely powerful means of survival.
Grab a highlighter, because you're going to want to remember just about every line of Pico's powerful poetry. A multiple-award winning writer, Pico grew up in the Viejas Reservation, near San Diego and writes stirring lines about his intersecting identities as a queer, American Indian, urban-dwelling poet.
In this unforgettable book, 12 characters converge at the Big Oakland Powwow as the story speeds toward its shocking conclusion. There's newly sober Jacquie Red Feather, Dene Oxendene, who works at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, who's going to watch her nephew perform a traditional Indian dance for the very first time, and so many more.
You may have noticed that the witchy aesthetic is having a moment, with tarot readings, sage burning and crystals featuring prominently on social media. But these ancient tools of the occult are so much more than that. In this series of braided essays, Washuta explores her own cultural context as she finds her way through addiction and mental health struggles to become a powerful witch in her own right.
Sarah Vincent (she/her) covers the latest and greatest in books and all things pets for Good Housekeeping. She double majored in Creative Writing and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, where she sat in the front row for every basketball game. In her spare time, she loves cooking, crafting, studying Japanese, and, of course, reading.
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