Justice and Racial Identity are a significant part of John and Sarah’s story, a human one—one not told from the victor’s perspective. Instead, the work is from the human perspective.

As often as I could do/can do, I integrate primary source documents through dialogue or narration; John Ridge left behind a significant body of original work. John Ridge was not a noble savage but a noble man.

John’s wife, Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge was of my gender and ethnicity. My husband has Cherokee ancestors, the Walkingsticks family line, from the Carolinas, recently tracked from emigration roles in 1837. A third of the manuscript speaks from her eyes, a white woman, traveling on love alone, to a culture foreign to her. 

Doing so would show the utmost disrespect to the ethnic cleansing and genocide the Cherokee, as well as other Native peoples, endured.

“Cultural appropriation leads to a narrow look at other cultures and often exploitation of those cultures. In contrast, appreciation involves a desire for knowledge and a deeper understanding of a culture. People who truly want to appreciate a culture offer respect to members of that culture and their traditions by participating only when invited to do so. Appreciation provides an opportunity to share ideas and cultural awareness” (“There’s a Big Difference between Cultural Appreciation and Appropriation — Here’s Why It Matters.”).

Before the book was published, I sought consent from  Ridge family descendants, sending them the initial final draft of the manuscript. While their opinions are not the only ones to consider, in my mind, they were the first ones I  consulted. 

Saying that anyone’s experience with anything from birth to death is the same, even within the same ethnicity, defeats the purpose of multicultural empathy through character-driven literature. Arnold Krupat responded to criticism in his American Studies article titled “Scholarship in Native American Studies” validating a reality that “Indians do not see eye to eye any more than non-Indians do” (Krupat 3). Are “identity politics” equal to “identity academia”? (Krupat 3).

N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich claim “that if America is to survive, it had better learn something from the Indian–and then, [they] find a wide range of attempts to learn categorized as intellectual tourism, cultural imperialism, or the imposition of an unjust burden on the Indian,” creates a “double-blind” (Krupat 5).

I made many craft decisions with #ownvoices in mind. The novel is in three points of view, each spoken in the first person: Cherokee, John Ridge, his white wife, Sarah, and their bi-racial daughter, Clarinda.

The second novel, Yellow Bird’s Song (working title) includes a fourth voice, John and Sarah’s son, John Rollin Ridge, the first Native American novelist, and a prolific newspaper writer and editor from California. 

In my opinion, American Dirt was aptly targeted because the author pitched “to a publisher and [got] a ‘$1,000,000’ advance, while authors who descend from Latino populations get told their stores are not “marketable,” and therefore not publishable” (“The Importance of #OwnVoices”). I can assure you that was not my situation nor circumstance.

“We as writers need to be telling stories that are reflective of the real world: stories about characters of all identities. And we, as readers, need to be actively requesting that publishers do a better job of publishing said stories” (Heath).

Frankly, it is a type of market-driven censorship to marginalized authors to limit their participation in the marketplace. It is another type of censorship that limits credible authors from writing fictional, ethnic voices in an already deprived marketplace.

How am I any different than academic historians because I transform history into literature’s humanity? Krupat believes that with a “spirit of solidarity,” “panhuman truth can set us free of us v. them differentiation” (Krupat 3).

I sought authors with similar situations, like author Charles Frazier and learned all I could from his experiences. I don’t doubt the question’s validity. Still, with due respect, I challenge it in the context of my well-researched historical novel/s. Over the last three years, I have pursued due diligence; however, I’m still not satisfied.

I’ve scoured the internet, read countless Ph.D. dissertations, watched documentaries, read slave narratives, and studied historians specializing in the Trail of Tears like Theda Purdue, Stephen Inskeep, Daniel Justice, John Putnam Demos, and Theresa Strouth Gaul, and Thurman Wilkins. Many of these historians do not appear to be People of Color; although I’d rather not assume based upon appearances.

The novel’s characterization and the plot are driven by primary source documents of John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, Sophie Sawyer, Principal Chief John Ross, and President Andrew Jackson.

There are indeed some situations and conflicts that I cannot know. However, my work is historical fiction and is NOT set within this century or the last. The story has 200 years of research and primary source documentation upon which to immerse myself.

Countless Caucasian historians and Cherokee historians have done so for centuries. I am not at a loss for material from both perspectives.

“While we live in a culture that tries to tell us that some groups are so different from us that we cannot possibly understand them, this is untrue. We are all human beings, and we can come alongside each other and learn from one another” (Heath).

Inclusion and possession are two different paradigms. One implies “listening” while the other implies “ownership” (Krupat 9).  ‘Tho I Be Mute’s theme emphasizes listening: often we are silent to those we need to hear us most profoundly.

‘Tho I Be Mute has maintained its integrity after two developmental and sensitivity editors. One of the editors was of Cherokee descent and found no issues with cultural appropriation or incorrect history. On the family’s behalf, I intend to sponsor a scholarship, in John Ridge’s name, to a deserving Cherokee student pursuing a law degree and support maintenance on the Polson Cemetary site in Southwest City, Missouri.

M. Annette James concluded, “Despite the fact of our coming from different traditions, we are now singing to the same drum, locked together in our common humanity and our common destiny” (Krupat 10). 

I interviewed David Marion Wilkinson, author of Oblivion’s Altar (Major Ridge’s story, John’s father). When I shared my cultural concerns, he said “This isn’t only the Cherokee’s story. It is one of courage. The Ridge family’s story is a human one, surrounded by corruption, evil, and greed.”
He’s absolutely right.  

“5 Problems within the Own Voices Campaign (and How to Fix Them).” Blogspot.com, 23 May 2021, hannahheath-writer.blogspot.com/2018/04/5-problems-within-own-voices-campaign.html. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Heath, Hannah. Nelson, Kristin. “Can White Authors Write Characters of Color?” Nelson Literary Agency, 21 May 2021, nelsonagency.com/2017/01/can-white-authors-write-characters-of-color/. Accessed 21 May 2021.

“Importance of #OwnVoices.” Morrill Memorial Library, 18 June 2020, www.norwoodlibrary.org/the-importance-of-ownvoices/. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Krupat, Arnold. “Scholarship and Native American Studies: A Response to Daniel Littlefield, Jr.” American Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, 1993, pp. 81–100. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40643668. Accessed 24 July 2021.

“There’s a Big Difference between Cultural Appreciation and Appropriation — Here’s Why It Matters.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 16 Sept. 2020, www.healthline.com/health/cultural-appreciation#short-answer. Accessed 23 June 2021. ‌