I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.

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October 1, 2025: Deborah Jackson Taffa

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Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Whiskey Tender is her first book and is the story of her childhood. The memoir’s cover features a photo of seven-year-old Deborah and her three sisters sitting with their father. Deborah describes them.

We were unruly Indian girls, not the friendly Thanksgiving Day types who knew how to cook and behave.

As we read Whiskey Tender, we grow up with Deborah. Except for the first, the chapters proceed chronologically. Each one is titled and dated by year from 1972 to 1987. Each one is filled with details that recreate moments. In the first chapter, their dad heats their shoes in front of the fire as they camp by the river. In the second, they watch their neighbor weep after his dog Rocco dies. In the third, their mother plays the Temptations at midnight and teaches the girls how to do the twist.

Deborah is Native, but her parents “wanted their kids to be mainstream Americans.” Apparently so did the schools, who ignored Native culture and history. One of the reasons Deborah wrote this memoir is so Native kids could “feel more connected and less lonely.”

I underlined so many sentences. The short ones are declaratory and strong. They say I know what I’m talking about.

We sisters were broken girls.

Look at the work the adjective broken is doing here. It makes us feel something and causes us to want to know broken how?

The desert reduced Mom, like town did Dad.

Here, it’s the verb doing the work of making us feel something. And this sentence feels sword-like. A quick slash to make the point that her parents were never going to be happy at the same time in the same place.

The year I turned four, Mom was sometimes happy.

In this sentence, it’s the adverb that makes things interesting, that makes us want to know when her mother was happy.

The next sentence is a longer, more complicated one that is interesting for its use of Indian as a verb, as well as for its use of the noun Indianness in the same sentence.

Lots of guys in Dad’s generation thought poverty was an expression of Indianness itself, and they tried to out-Indian each other by resisting regular jobs.

And here’s an example of Deborah tying two sentences together with metaphor to make meaning come alive for the reader.

A storm was brewing between my parents about mobility and money. Even as a pre-schooler, I could feel it like I felt the shift in humidity before it thundered and rained.

The first chapter, which is given to us out of order, takes place in 1981, when Deborah is twelve. It’s called “Animas” for the “River of Souls” where the shoes are being heated by the fire and for the story that takes place by its banks and anchors it. As the first chapter, it sets the stage for the stories to follow.

…I hold my ancestors close to my heart, knowing I too will be an ancestor someday, adding to the chain of lives that came before. With death as my guide, I remember what’s important, and listen for the river even now. “Do not participate in the erasure of your own people,” the voices murmur. “Do not be a silent witness as we fade.”

Whiskey Tender was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, as well as a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. It was awarded a Southwest Book Prize and an International Latino Book Award. It was also named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and Audible.

Deborah earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and she is currently the director of the MFA CW Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a 2024 NEA Fellow and a 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. She was selected for the 2024 Poets & Writers 5 over 50 feature and is currently working on a sequel to Whiskey Tender.

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Come back on OCTOBER 1st to read how DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA spends her days.