If it can be said that Native culture is hidden behind the facade of mainstream America, there is a facet of that culture hidden even to many Native Americans.
She is li.
Belin holds American culture accountable for failing to treat its indigenous peoples with respect, but speaks for the ability of Native culture to survive and provide hope, even for mixed-blood or urban Indians.
And they have survived so that they might bear witness, as Esther Belin so powerfully does.
They have survived by remembering who they were and where they came from.
From the Belly of My Beauty is also a ceremony of affirmation and renewal for those Native Americans affected by the Federal Indian Relocation Program of the 1950s and \'60s, with its attempts to "assimilate" them into the American mainstream.
Her use of Din language and poignant descriptions of family life will remind some of Joy Harjo\'s work, but with every turn of the page, readers will know that Belin is making her own mark on Native American literature.
Belin\'s Poems put familiar cultural forms in a new context, as Coyote "struts down east 14th / feeling good / looking good / feeling the brown." Her character Ruby dramatizes the gritty reality of a Native woman\'s life ("I laugh / sit / smoke a Virginia Slim / and talk to the spirits").
Her work reveals a difference in experience but a similarity in outlook.
She presents aspects of Din life and history not normally seen by readers accustomed to accounts written by Navajos brought up on the reservation.
In this bold new collection of poems, Belin presents a startling vision of urban California--particularly Los Angeles--contrasted with Navajo life in the Four Corners region.
Raised in the city, she speaks with an entirely different voice From that of her reservation kindred as she expresses herself on subjects of urban alienation, racism, sexism, substance abuse, and cultural estrangement.
One of today\'s generation of outstanding Native writers, Esther Belin is an urban Indian.
If it can be said that Native culture is hidden behind the facade of mainstream America, there is a facet of that culture hidden even to many Native Americans
