- Source: A Council of Dolls
A Council of Dolls is a 2023 historical fiction novel about multiple generations of Yanktonai Dakota women grappling with the effects of settler colonialism, told partially through the point of view of their dolls. The novel is by Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Sioux), PEN Award-winning author of several works related to Native identity, such as The Grass Dancer. The book was released through Mariner Books August 2023. A Council of Dolls was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.
Plot summary
Three generations of Dakota girls and their dolls live through family and societal change. The girls and dolls can talk to each other, and the dolls have powers to help the girls through the tragedies they face.
Concept and creation
A Council of Dolls was published nearly thirty years after the success of Mona Susan Power's debut novel The Grass Dancer. Power struggled with mental health and her writing practice following her debut.
The novel is an expansion on an earlier story about dolls published in The Missouri Review called "Naming Ceremony". "Naming Ceremony" was runner-up for the 2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and a finalist for the 2019 Rick DeMarinis Short Story Prize.
Power was guided by her family's own history with unwelcome government intervention into Native society and multigenerational experiences with Indian boarding schools. The novel is semi-autobiographical, with the characters and story based on herself, her own family members, and their family history. The character of Lillian is based on her mother, activist Susan Kelly Power, one of the founders of the American Indian Center in Chicago, Illinois. While writing another novel in 2014 entitled Harvard Indian Seance at Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, Power felt compelled to tell the story of boarding school survivors. Weeks later, international news broke about child burials at Canadian boarding schools, which she says explained her need to tell boarding school stories. Power wrote about several generations of the family because she wanted readers to sympathize with the effects of their intergenerational trauma, rather than condemn them. For Writer's Digest she explained: "My concern that the mother character will be judged and disliked for her woundedness, the dangers it creates, leads me to include two more generations of girls and their stories. As I write, I feel ancestors crowding into the small room. This is their story, too. I believe they support my efforts, cheer me on, as if my healing the past will help them set down their own sadness and regret." At times writing the novel was so emotional she would cry. "A Council of Dolls is my attempt to be part of a long overdue, ferociously suppressed healing ceremony." (The book dedication reads "For my ancestors".)
The novel was written during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The first draft was completed in four months following recovery from a broken arm in May 2021. Power was completing copy-edits in 2022.
Release
Power held a launch party on publication day 8 August 2023 at the Birchbark Books event space Birchbark Bizhew in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first printing was 75,000 books. A paperback version was released November 5, 2024.
The cover art is by Dakota beadwork artist Holly Young (Standing Rock Sioux), who connected with Power while researching prominent historical beadworker Nellie Two Bears Gates (Standing Rock Sioux), who is Power's great-grandmother. Publisher Harper Collins chose an existing piece for A Council of Dolls: floral appliqué beadwork sewn onto blue velvet cloth in traditional Dakota style. Young also created a custom work for the cover of Diane Wilson's The Seed Keeper, and the newest edition of The Grass Dancer.
Reception
Overall reception was positive. A starred review by Publishers Weekly calls it a "story of survival that shines brightly," and says Power reveals a "deep knowledge of Indigenous history" and the book is a "keen" and "wrenching" depiction of boarding schools. Booklist describes the novel as a "heart-wrenching account of inherited trauma and resilience" that "is perceptively told." Midwest Book Review "unreservedly recommend[s]" the book as a "masterpiece of literary elegance and emotional eloquence". Kirkus Reviews had a mixed response to the book, saying it was "occasionally moving" but "steeped a little bit too long in sentimentality."
Dakota author Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan of the Oceti Sakowin Writers Society praised A Council of Dolls for bringing to light the experiences of boarding school survivors and their descendants, and relates events in the book to recorded abuses at boarding schools raised in legal cases and academic studies.
A Council of Dolls illustrates the horrible legacy and emotional toll of medical neglect, mental abuse, disease, malnourishment, use of child labor, sexual abuse, and physically abusive conditions that wakaneja [children] endured while attending boarding school. Due to adverse childhood experiences, many young people did not survive boarding school and their resting places are in marked and unmarked school graveyards across America. These children were never returned to their grieving families. In many cases the records of burial sites and their locations have been lost. Families then suffer as a result of those wakaneja who have disappeared. This story describes the results of 150 years of stress, anguish, and feelings of powerlessness of parents, the tiwahe [family] and the Oyate [nation] due to the loss of their cherished children to inhumane educational institutions. These schools were places where wakaneja should have been protected, educated and nurtured.
Centers for the Book of the Library of Congress selected A Council of Dolls as one of Minnesota's "Great Reads for Adults". The novel was featured in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023. Good Housekeeping recommended it as part of their GH Book Club, and as sixth out of thirty "must-read" books by Native authors. People and Washington Post also highlighted the novel. It was the November Target Book Club Pick.
= Awards
=
A Council of Dolls was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, and won the 2024 Minnesota Book Awards category for novels. The novel won the woman writer category for the High Plains Book Awards, which honors books about the High Plains region in the U.S. and Canada.
Editions
A Council of Dolls is also available as an audiobook from HarperAudio, read by actress Isabella Star LaBlanc (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) (ISBN 9780063281127), and in ebook (ISBN 9780063281110) and large print format (ISBN 9798885796194).
Minnesota State Services for the Blind read the book live on-air in a twelve part broadcast series starting May 28, 2024, part of their Radio Talking Book program, which communicates publications such as newspapers, magazines, and popular books via radio 24-hours a day.
Further reading
"A Novel Surprise". South Dakota Magazine. Vol. 40, no. 3. Yankton, South Dakota. September–October 2024. p. 11. ISSN 0886-2680. EBSCOhost 179428530. Retrieved October 23, 2024. (PDF version)
Power, Mona Susan; Riehl, Paige (October 15, 2024). "Interview with Mona Susan Power about A Council of Dolls (Mariner, 2023), winner of the Minnesota Book Award in Fiction and longlisted for the National Book Award and the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction". Midway Journal. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
References
External links
A Council of Dolls on author Mona Susan Power's website
A Council of Dolls on publisher HarperCollins website
Full text of preceding story Naming Ceremony published by The Missouri Review
Also available via Project MUSE 788720
Preview A Council of Dolls at Google Books
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