Three generations of Dakota girls and their dolls live through family and societal change. The girls and dolls can talk to each other, and the dolls have powers to help the girls through the tragedies they face.[2] The narrative is non-linear.[6]
Concept and creation
A Council of Dolls was published nearly thirty years after the success of Mona Susan Power's debut novel The Grass Dancer. Power struggled with mental health and her writing practice following her debut.[7][8]
The novel is an expansion on an earlier story about dolls published in The Missouri Review called "Naming Ceremony".[9][10] "Naming Ceremony" was runner-up for the 2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize[11][12] and a finalist for the 2019 Rick DeMarinis Short Story Prize.[13]
Power was guided by her family's own history with unwelcome government intervention into Native society and multigenerational experiences with Indian boarding schools. The novel is semi-autobiographical,[1] with the characters and story based on herself, her own family members, and their family history. The character of Lillian is based on her mother, activist Susan Kelly Power, one of the founders of the American Indian Center in Chicago, Illinois. While writing another novel in 2014 entitled Harvard Indian Seance at Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, Power felt compelled to tell the story of boarding school survivors. Weeks later, international news broke about child burials at Canadian boarding schools, which she says explained her need to tell boarding school stories. Power wrote about several generations of the family because she wanted readers to sympathize with the effects of their intergenerational trauma, rather than condemn them.[14] For Writer's Digest she explained: "My concern that the mother character will be judged and disliked for her woundedness, the dangers it creates, leads me to include two more generations of girls and their stories. As I write, I feel ancestors crowding into the small room. This is their story, too. I believe they support my efforts, cheer me on, as if my healing the past will help them set down their own sadness and regret."[15] At times writing the novel was so emotional she would cry.[16][17][8] "A Council of Dolls is my attempt to be part of a long overdue, ferociously suppressed healing ceremony."[18] (The book dedication reads "For my ancestors".)[19]
The novel was written during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The first draft was completed in four months following recovery from a broken arm in May 2021.[10][20] Power was completing copy-edits in 2022.[21]
The cover art is by Dakota beadwork artist Holly Young (Standing Rock Sioux), who connected with Power while researching prominent historical beadworker Nellie Two Bears Gates (Standing Rock Sioux), who is Power's great-grandmother. Publisher Harper Collins chose an existing piece for A Council of Dolls: floral appliqué beadwork sewn onto blue velvet cloth in traditional Dakota style. Young also created a custom work for the cover of Diane Wilson's The Seed Keeper, and the newest edition of The Grass Dancer.[27][28][1]
Reception
Overall reception was positive.[29] A starred review by Publishers Weekly calls it a "story of survival that shines brightly," and says Power reveals a "deep knowledge of Indigenous history" and the book is a "keen" and "wrenching" depiction of boarding schools.[30]Booklist describes the novel as a "heart-wrenching account of inherited trauma and resilience" that "is perceptively told."[31]Midwest Book Review "unreservedly recommend[s]" the book as a "masterpiece of literary elegance and emotional eloquence".[32]Kirkus Reviews had a mixed response to the book, saying it was "occasionally moving" but "steeped a little bit too long in sentimentality."[33]
Dakota author Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan of the Oceti Sakowin Writers Society praised A Council of Dolls for bringing to light the experiences of boarding school survivors and their descendants, and relates events in the book to recorded abuses at boarding schools raised in legal cases and academic studies.[34]
A Council of Dolls illustrates the horrible legacy and emotional toll of medical neglect, mental abuse, disease, malnourishment, use of child labor, sexual abuse, and physically abusive conditions that wakaneja [children] endured while attending boarding school. Due to adverse childhood experiences, many young people did not survive boarding school and their resting places are in marked and unmarked school graveyards across America. These children were never returned to their grieving families. In many cases the records of burial sites and their locations have been lost. Families then suffer as a result of those wakaneja who have disappeared. This story describes the results of 150 years of stress, anguish, and feelings of powerlessness of parents, the tiwahe [family] and the Oyate [nation] due to the loss of their cherished children to inhumane educational institutions. These schools were places where wakaneja should have been protected, educated and nurtured.
— Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan (Oceti Sakowin Writers Society), A Council of Dolls: A Novel by Mona Susan Power (review)[34]
Centers for the Book of the Library of Congress selected A Council of Dolls as one of Minnesota's "Great Reads for Adults".[35] The novel was featured in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023. Good Housekeeping recommended it as part of their GH Book Club, and as sixth out of thirty "must-read" books by Native authors.[36][37][38]People and Washington Post also highlighted the novel.[39][40] It was the November Target Book Club Pick.[41][42]
Minnesota State Services for the Blind read the book live on-air in a twelve part broadcast series starting May 28, 2024, part of their Radio Talking Book program, which communicates publications such as newspapers, magazines, and popular books via radio 24-hours a day.[51]
^"All the books longlisted for the National Book Awards this year." Washingtonpost.com, 15 Sept. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A765445489/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=3826a18e. Accessed 23 Oct. 2024.
^Geger, Annalisa; Jensen, Kaitlyn (22 December 2023). "An Interview with Mona Susan Power". The Missouri Review. University of Missouri. Archived from the original on 1 November 2023. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
^Power, Mona Susan (18 April 2023). "Naming Ceremony". The Missouri Review. Curators of the University of Missouri. Archived from the original on 4 November 2023. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
^Mona Susan Power (October 22, 2024). One Book, One Community: A Council of Dolls(video). Pablo Center at the Confluence, Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Chippewa Valley Book Festival, L.E. Philips Memorial Public Library. Event occurs at 32:25. Retrieved October 23, 2024. A Council of Dolls is my attempt to be part of a long overdue, ferociously suppressed healing ceremony.
^Power, Mona Susan (2023). A Council of Dolls. New York: Mariner Books. ISBN978-0-06-328109-7.
^"Library of Congress Centers for the Book Choose 'Great Reads' Titles for Each State, Territory for 2024 National Book Festival." Targeted News Service, 17 May 2024, p. NA. Gale OneFile: News, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A794162835/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=4217dda0. Accessed 23 Oct. 2024.
^"About Us". High Plains Book Awards. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
^"Winners". High Plains Book Awards. Retrieved October 12, 2024.
^"RTB Radio News". State Services for the Blind. Minnesota State Employment and Economic Development. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 20, 2024. Choice Reading. Monday – Friday 2:00 p.m. A Council of Dolls – Fiction by Mona Susan Power, 2023. A profoundly moving novel spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day. Read by Pat Muir. 12 broadcasts; begins Tuesday, May 28.
