Book Review: “Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity”, by Leah Myers

Reading time: 1 min

We are here and alive.

★★★☆☆

A relevant and true voice that keeps the spirit alive.

Leah Myers is one of the last 542 S’Klallam people, and in this profound memoir Thinning Blood, she uses a fictional totem as a narrative guide through her family history. We will go back to the roots of it with her great-grandmother, or Bear, we’ll move on to her grandmother, Salmon, through her mother Hummingbird, all the way to her totem animal, Raven.

What compelled the author to write this memoir is the fact that she is one eighteenth Native American, meaning that her children could be one sixteenth, a percentage that, according to law, will not classify them as such. She’s trying to preserve her origins and her people, feeling at the same time the dread of the end of a nation. Towards the end of the book, she talks to her descendants, if she will ever have any, and brings on the tradition of asking what she hopes for her seventh generation.

But Thinning Blood is not just a book written to preserve the memory, it’s first and foremost a book that delves into the experience of the author, and I suspect a book that acted as a therapeutic tool for Leah Myers. She recounts the struggles she has learning the language, the racism she was subjected to (trigger warning: even an attempted murder), her love/hate relationship with Pocahontas and Disney‘s misrepresentation, her fear of not belonging.

Final Thoughts

Thinning Blood is a memoir, as advertised. It specifically deals with the trouble of feeling like an outsider to both worlds, with imposter syndrome, and with the fear of never be Native enough. Leah Myers does a good job exploring the inner turmoil of the last descendants of a population, and she gives some information and numbers about it, but I didn’t feel like this book had an educational purpose in mind. I also didn’t find the writer to be entirely likeable, which contributes to a more neutral rating.

Table of Contents

Bear
A Legend of the Bear Mother
Real Live Indians
An Annotated Guide to Anti-Native Slurls
Bear’s Decision
Salmon
A Legend of Salmon Woman
Roots
Skinwalker
Native Enough
Salmon’s Memory
Hummingbird
A Legend of Hummingbird
Portrait of a Perfect Native
A Writer Who Can’t Read
Hummingbird’s Movement
Raven
A Legend of Raven Stealing the Sunlight
Unreported Violence
Scalping Knife Turned Scalpel
A Letter to My Seventh-Generation
The Sound of the End
Raven’s Emergence