I’ve really missed doing Friday Favorites, and since no one was currently hosting it, Cait @ Functionally Fictional decided to jump into the gap. Each week, she provides a prompt, and I get to talk about my favorite books that fit the topic. Feel free to join in – the more the merrier!

This week’s prompt is books written by Indigenous authors, and I’m thrilled about it. November is Native American Heritage Month here in the United States, and there’s no better time to highlight books written by Indigenous authors. Here are some of my personal favorites:

1. There, There by Tommy Orange. This is an unforgettable story, involving 12 different characters, and all of their storylines intersect as they travel to the Big Oakland Powwow, and converge in a shocking conclusion. Bonus—there’s a sequel finally being released next year!
2. VenCo by Cherie Dimaline. All I needed to hear was Indigenous representation and witches covens and I was sold on this book, and luckily, it was even better than I had hoped!
3. Shutter by Ramona Emerson. An outstanding thriller set on the Navajo Nation lands, featuring a Navajo crime scene photographer who is haunted by ghosts of the murdered, and it is so creepy.
4. This House is Not a Home by Katłıà. This story is about a family in the north of Canada who returns from a fishing trip to discover their house gone. They are forced to move into housing like the white people, while their son is forced into residential school, and it’s based on a true story.
5. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. This is a fantasy set in a pre-Columbian Americas-adjacent world, and it’s a fantastic story with LGBTQIA+ representation and outstanding world-building.
6. The Break by Katherena Vermette. A young Métis mother witnesses a crime one winter night, and it leads to an exploration of several very different lives that intersect on that one fateful night, as readers and the police try to figure out what really happened.
7. Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. This is a brutal and unflinching look at the lives of five young people who survived a residential school and are trying to come to terms with their trauma in a variety of ways, some of them healthier than others.
8. On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel. You know those books that stay with you long after you finish them? This is one of those books, and while there isn’t necessarily Indigenous representation in this one, the author is Indigenous and wrote a biography of her mother which touches more on her Indigenous experience.
9. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer. This is an incredibly comprehensive nonfiction book that delves into the history that we aren’t taught in our whitewashed history classes. 
10. Better the Blood by Michael Bennett. This isn’t a Native American author or story, but the author is Maōri, and the story centers on a Maōri detective trying to solve a string of murders that are related to New Zealand’s brutal history of colonization, and it was fascinating to learn a bit more about the Maōri people and their beliefs.

What are some of your favorite books written by Indigenous authors?