Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is Allison Adelle Hedge Coke's searching account of her life as a mixed-blood woman coming of age off reservation, yet deeply immersed in her Huron, Métis, and Cherokee heritage. In a style at once elliptical and achingly clear, Hedge Coke details her mother's schizophrenia, the domestic and community abuse overshadowing her childhood, and torments both visited upon her (rape and violence) and inflicted on herself (alcohol and drug abuse during her youth). Yet she managed to survive with her dreams and her will, her sense of wonder and promise undiminished.
The title Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer refers to life-revelations guiding the award-winning poet and writer through her many trials, as well as her labors in tobacco fields, factories, construction, and fishing; her motherhood; her involvement with music and performance; and the melding of language and experience that brought order to her life. Hedge Coke shares insights gathered along the way, insights touching on broader Native issues such as modern life in the diaspora; lack of a national eco-ethos; the threat of alcohol, drug abuse, and violence; and the ongoing onslaught on self amid a complex mixed heritage.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Oklahoma, is a Great Plains Fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is the author of The Year of the Rat, Dog Road Woman (winner of the American Book Award), Off-Season City Pipe, and Blood Run, and she most recently edited Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas and Effigies.