One Book One Community 2022 Book Chosen: Faculty Encouraged to Consider Adoption

This GORGEOUS cover was designed by Rich Deas, Senior Art Director at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. Book by Angeline Boulley

The One Book, One Community Committee is excited to announce that it has chosen The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley as the 2022 selection for the U of A.

This Young Adult read has received rave reviews and several awards including a Goodreads Choice Award, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year and NPR Best Book of the Year. The committee intentionally chose to consider a book connected to the topic of Native American communities for the 2022 selection for our campus to increase campus engagement with Native American students and community members.

This book, written by an Indigenous author, focuses on issues faced by Native American populations across the country and young people growing up in these communities by focusing on fictional life events experienced by a young biracial, unenrolled Ojibwe tribal member facing corruption and crime with resilience.

“Boulley [the author], herself an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, writes from a place of love for her community and shares some key teachings from her culture, even mixing languages within the context of the story. She doesn’t shy away from or sugar-coat the very real circumstances that plague reservations across the country, and she tackles these through her biracial hero who gets involved in the criminal investigation into the corruption that led to this pain. An incredible thriller, not to be missed.” —Booklist, Starred Review[1]

According to Caitlyn Paxson’s book review for NPR[2], “As a non-Indigenous reader, every depiction and explanation of Ojibwe philosophy and traditions felt like a gift, and every depiction of injustice felt like a call to action. There has long been a need for more books that depict Indigenous people as living people in our modern world rather than as a romanticized and often inaccurate fairytale of the past, and Firekeeper’s Daughter carries that torch brightly.”

To encourage conversations around contemporary issues facing Native American communities in Northwest Arkansas, the One Book, One Community Committee will also be working with campus groups and the community for ancillary events.

We would like to encourage faculty on campus to consider adopting this text as a supplementary text for their Fall 2022 courses. The committee has several copies of the book for faculty review. Please contact Lauren Sabon at copley@uark.edu if you would like a copy to review before submitting your course adoptions. There will also be a chapter selection available for faculty if they would like to incorporate the book and its topics into the course in a smaller way.

As an added bonus, this book is going to be adapted for Netflix by President and Ms. Obama’s production company, Higher Ground!

More details on the author’s campus presentation in Fall 2022 will be forthcoming.

This story also appeared in the University of Arkansas News publication.