You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie

How I Found:  My best friend sent me this for my birthday with a note saying, "I've wanted to read this and so I thought you could too, and it would be like our own little book club."  This is definitely a two-person book club book, a best-friend book club book.   Incredibly personal and heart-wrenching, Alexie bares his soul, his grief for both his mother and his culture in a patchwork of prose and poetry that might reveal how the perpetrated can become the perpetrator.  Having grown up in the farm towns near the reservation he lived in and high school he went to made the words that much more poignant and powerful for me.
Why You Might Read:  A memoir for and of his mother, Alexie reveals that complex relationship of mother and child. Each needing the other but also needing to grow with and from one another.  He revels in the gifts she left him, " . . . a trust fund/Of words, words, and words/That exist in me/Like dinosaurs live in birds" while simultaneously mourning what she could not provide and taking with her Spokane words and thoughts that will never be spoken or thought again.  Extremely private, this book should be read by those seeking perspective with eyes wide open and reserved for quiet and contemplative conversation suited only for those with whom you can talk with souls laid bare.

For more Native American perspective see "Missing More Than a Word" from Tanaya Winder in the June Issue of Poetry Magazine.