Chicago: home to urban Indians and immigrants and working folks and the whole gamut of people getting by in a world that doesn’t care whether they do so or not. Sacred City is an incomparable follow-up to Van Alst’s award-winning debut collection, Sacred Smokes. Our young narrator now heads deeper into the heart of the city and himself, accompanied by ancestors and spirits who help him and the reader see that Chicago was, is, and always will be Indian Country. Part love song and part lament, Sacred City explores what options are available to an intelligent, smart-assed young man who was born poor and grew up in a gang. Van Alst’s skillful storytelling takes us on a journey where Chicago will never seem the same.
Circa l’autore
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (enrolled member Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is an Active HWA member whose work has been published in Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Red Earth Review, the Journal of Working-Class Studies, Chicago Review, Apex Magazine, Electric Literature, Indian Country Today, and the Massachusetts Review, among others. He is also the author of Sacred Smokes and the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best Un American Stories of Stephen Graham Jones (both from UNM Press).