It’s time for YA lit by Native American Author Eric Gansworth.

I’m a total sucker for pre-internet coming-of-age books.

I had my tween and teen daughters read these before I did, as an assignment for school. When the girls first started reading, one boldly claimed she would have it finished in a week. It ended up being WEEKS of me nagging them daily to read.

My girls are both drawn toward contemporary YA, so that may have been the disconnect. Importantly, though, the analysis I had the girls write after they read indicated that even though they didn’t seem to love the books, they definitely got something out of them and were moved by them.

When it was my turn, I ripped through Give Me Some Truth in two days, and devoured If I Ever Get Out of Here not long after that. That was backwards. The characters overlap, and chronologically, If I Ever Get Out of Here takes place first, but I liked it the best, so I’m glad I read it second.

Both books take a sweeping arc to the story’s climax. In both, the characters learn about themselves, and both feature a rich backdrop of music which I found pre-made playlists for online (Gansworth also has all the song titles and artists listed in the back of the book).

I was immediately into the setting of Give Me Some Truth – Western New York, 1980. (If I Ever Get Out of Here takes place a few years earlier in the same location.) I spent some time in western New York as a teenager and have genuinely good memories from the region.

Eric Gansworth is a poet and artist, and Give Me Some Truth is illustrated with his own artwork, inspired by traditional Native art forms like beadwork and cornhusk dolls. The books are also organized around the music of the Beatles, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon.

These two books have a cast of adults who are involved in the main character’s lives – imperfect, real people who care about the teens in their lives, but show it in different ways. The books are as much about friends and family as they are about the main characters.

The stories are an exploration of all the longings, highs, and lows of teenage life, from the perspective of kids who live on the outside of the American life many people are familiar with.

What makes life on a reservation different? How does Native life differ culturally from American life? What discrimination and struggles do they face? What barriers exist? Along with learning about Native life, the books have lessons for teens today – about bullying, advocacy, the choices we make when no one’s looking, and setting boundaries with people in our lives.

One day, I cued up one of the playlists in the car. The slow smile that crept onto my daughter’s face as she recognized the lyrics told me that reading the book hadn’t been as much a drag as she’d let on. (She once let it slip that the kids make it seem like they hate everything I make them read for school, whether they like it or not. Sometimes the truth seeps through.)

You could read either of these books on their own, but I liked them as a pair because they each provided a different perspective from the same group of characters. You’ll be looking up songs, checking Tuscarora language references, and rooting for these kids till the very end.