Shell Shaker

Shell Shaker

Author	LeAnne Howe
Cover artist	Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Aunt Lute Books
Publication date	September 2001
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	223 pp
ISBN	978-1-879960-61-9

Shell Shaker is a novel written by LeAnne Howe, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The novel's plot revolves around two tales of murder involving Choctaw political leaders. It is set over a span of 200 years, and focuses on various generations of the Billy family, who try to keep the peace. According to the author, Shell Shaker is "a book about power, its misuse, and how a community responds. It's not for Indians only."

Title's Meaning

A "shell shaker" is a woman who participates in a specific Choctaw ceremony during which empty turtle shells are tied around a dancer's feet. The purpose of the dance is to pray for spirits to carry out a request. The Billy family featured in the novel are descendants of the first shell shaker, Grandmother of Birds.

Plot summary

Shell Shaker links two generations of the Billy family. It begins in the year 1738 in Choctaw Mississippi initially focussing Red Shoes. Red Shoes is a historical Choctaw warrior. When his wife of the Red Fox clan of the Chickasaws is murdered, his Choctaw wife Anoleta is blamed. Her mother, Shakbatina, forfeits her life to save Anoleta and avert a war between the two tribes. Anoleta and her family attempt to move on as their tribe spends the next decade deciding actions that must be taken against Red Shoes, who plays both sides in what would become a war that devastates the people of Yanàbi Town and Anoleta's family.

The descendants of Shakbatina live in Durant, Oklahoma in 1991. As a fire destroys the land around them, Redford McAlester (Chief of the Choctaw Nation) is murdered, and Assistant Chief Auda Billy, his lover, gets blamed. Susan Billy, her mother, confesses of the murder while Isaac Billy, her uncle, brings together their scattered family to help in the investigation. The plot involves embezzlement, rape, money laundering, and contributions to the Irish Republican Army and the Mafia. Spirits also become involved when an old woman claims to be Sarah Bernhardt.

Characters

18th century

• Shakbatina: The granddaughter of the first shell shaker and her warrior husband Tuscaloosa. She is also the mother of Anoleta, Neshoba and Haya, and the wife of Koi Chitto. Being the leader of the peace clan, she gives her life to save her daughter and avert impending war. Her character narrates sporadically throughout the novel.
• Anoleta: First daughter of Shakbatina and Koi Chitto - she is accused of the murder of her husband Red Shoes' other wife. She later remarries and gives birth to Chunkashbili, whose name would go on to be the surname of her descendants. She feels that Red Shoes' actions are her fault, as she often vouched for him against her family and therefore feels that she must be the one to kill him.
• Red Shoes: He was once thought to be the Imataha Chitto, the "greatest giver", which would supposedly reunite the scattered Choctaw people. He has since become known as an osano, a horsefly or bloodsucker. He consistently makes and breaks ties with every tribe and invading nation, eventually leading to a war with the Chickasaw and the English.
• Koi Chitto: "Big Panther" is the father of the family, a warrior who leaves after his wife's death, but must return to carry out the Bone Picking Ceremony and eventually lead his family and tribe in the war with Red Shoes.
• Nitakechi: Brother of Shakbatina - he feels torn between his hatred of Red Shoes and his life as a peacemaker. Shakbatina tells him before his death that the one to reunite the tribes was likely a woman whom Nitakechi should find and marry.
• Jean Baptiste Bienville: From Quebec, he is the founder of New Orleans and a friend of the Choctaw, especially Shakbatina. Although he alternately returns to France and back again to the colony, he remains close with her family after her death as he has been adopted by the tribe.
• Neshoba: Literally meaning "she-wolf" - Neshoba is the second child of Shakbatina and Koi Chitto. She falls in love and runs away with Father Renoir, a priest sent to the tribe.
• Haya: The youngest daughter, who sees the good in most people, including Bienville, the priests, and Red Shoes. She and Anoleta join their male relatives in the war with Red Shoes.
• Elsley: English trader and friend of Red Shoes - he is one of the few to stand by him in war. While his presence is felt throughout the earlier tale, he appears only at the end once the war has begun.

20th century

• Auda Billy: A former Choctaw historian, Auda has studied many of the characters of the earlier story. She is sure of her own guilt in Redford McAlester's murder and is increasingly visited by spirits and dreams slowly revealing the truth of both her own past and her family's history.
• Susan Billy: Mother of Auda, Tema, and Adair, she spent her life helping those around her, both in boarding school and in Durant. When she confesses to McAlester's murder, the community begins to fight for her.
• Isaac Billy: Uncle Isaac, as he is called, brings the family together and fights as a modern-day warrior to protect them. He feels guilty for his lack of action both against McAlester and in his personal life and resolves to make up for it in any way possible. After a trip to a woman named Divine Sarah, Isaac begins to connect his family's history with its current situation.
• Adair Billy: The youngest sister of the modern family - Adair is a high paid New Orleans securities investor who is obsessed with the macabre and is known around the Wall Street community for hearing voices that lead her to good decisions.
• Tema Billy: The middle sister of the family - she is an actress who has lived in both New York City and London who has moved to Texas with her son and husband to be closer to her family.
• Redford McAlester: Chief of the Choctaw Nation and builder of the Casino of the Sun, he gained his position by making empty promises to his tribe and gained power by changing Choctaw traditions. Once the love of Auda, he has pushed her away with his corruption, eventually leading to his rape of her the night before he is shot.
• Hopaii "Hoppy" Iskitini: His name literally means "little prophet," a position to which he lives up. He is very close to Isaac and makes the trip with him to see Divine Sarah where she is very impressed with him. Tema's teenage son is the member of a rock band called the Chocozombies and has recently dyed his hair green.
• Borden Beade: Tema's husband - Borden is an Englishman, a fact he feels makes her uncle distrust and dislike him. While at first very skeptical of Tema's stories of spirits, he eventually leaves his job in a Dallas theater to be with Tema and her family.
• Gore Battiste: A member of the Alibamu Conchatys tribe (which had been brought in to resolve the dispute between tribes in the earlier story) - he is Auda's lawyer, brought in by Adair, with whom he had a one-night stand nine years before. While skeptical early on, he begins to uncover the truth in Auda's stories while falling in love with Adair.
• Dovie Love: An eccentric "aunt" of the family - she and her older sister have lived an adventurous life complete with boarding schools, Hollywood movies and yoga studios. Which has earned her a reputation as something of a Choctaw folk hero and celebrity. While the younger of the sisters, she is quite clearly the more dominant of the two.
• Delores Love: Much like her sister, Delores has lived an exciting life. She has a complicated history with Isaac and has become known, in an update of the Bone Picking Ceremony, as a funeral singer of traditional songs.
• Grandmother Porcupine/Divine Sarah: A mysterious old woman who is seen by many characters (and has seen many more) before Isaac, Hoppy, and Nick go to her home where she leads them on a vision through parts of their history. A trickster character, she makes many wild claims which, at first unbelievable, become increasingly realistic.
• Nick Carney: A local artist and friend of Hoppy's, he assists in any way possible, including being part of the vision quest of Divine Sarah. He is the owner of one of the novel's most comical and memorable images: the peanutmobile, an actual vehicle existing in Durant.
• James Joyce: Joyce is the pseudonym of the Irish gangster with a connection to the late chief. Like his namesake, Joyce speaks in stream of consciousness, which Gore, using tools he's learned as a lawyer, must translate to Adair. Like Elsley, he appears only as the story ends after having been all too present in the preceding sections.
• Carl Tonica: The financial manager of the tribe - he becomes acting chief when Auda is accused of murder. He promptly takes away the tribal status of the family and works to find McAlester's hidden money before the federal government or the mafia. His girlfriend, Vergie Reagan, makes an attempt on Auda's life.
• Nowatima: Grandmother of the Billy family, she is a survivor of the Trail of Tears. She teaches Delores the traditional songs and gives heirlooms of their ancestors to the women of the family.
• D'Amato Brothers: Hector and Vico are the representatives of Shamrock Resorts, financier of the Casino of the Sun, who are sent to watch out for McAlester. After the murder, the dangerous brothers race to find the money McAlester has stolen from them by any means necessary.

Major themes

• Connection of spirits: As evident in the novel, if the body to whom the Shilombish (now considered a soul) belonged had been troubled in life or was murdered, the outer shadow would remain around the family until the problem was solved. The burial ceremony popular before Americanization gave time to the spirit for becoming accustomed to their new world, also allowing them time to stick around. Koi Chitto is afraid that if the Bone Picking Ceremony is carried out too quickly, Shakbatina may not be able to fully learn her role as a spirit.
• Circular notion of time and nature: Past and present are not words that can describe parts of the story accurately. Those things in what could be called the past are ever present in the later tale, abolishing any differences. Everything returns and everything remains. "Do not forget that the dead are helping the living" Red Shoes is reminded (171).
• Connection to land: Choctaw legend tells of the earth as their birthplace, more specifically, the Nanih Waiya, or mother mound, in modern-day Mississippi. The novel consistently maintains a connection to land that the Choctaw hold. Burial practices, like the Bone Picking Ceremony, are built around this as it is believed that body must be returned to the land it was given up from.
• Bloodsuckers (Osano)/Cannibalism: "The book describes this with an individual leader's desire for personal power and that for the tribe, followed by how all this power overtakes him. He becomes corrupt and commits hurtful, destructive acts. He devours human life. Howe takes the readers into the minds of the corrupt so that they may be shocked into an understanding of how corruption occurs, and that they may be incited to take a critical look at the actions of their own leaders." Howe herself connects this to corruption in American society today, saying the osano are "everywhere. Since 9/11 within our own country, corporate America leaders, men and women in Congress, people who feed off the blood of others are becoming embarrassingly visible."
• Importance of women: "the contemporary Billy sisters in Shell Shaker are "real" Indian women, exercising autonomy in successful careers as a history professor, a stockbroker, and an actor, not oppressed and marginalized figures without power or romanticized Indian princesses, as Indian women are sometimes portrayed by non-Native writers"
• Power of words: Traditionally, words have the power to become real if spoken, especially if done carelessly. Tema, in her first appearance, displays this when she explains to her English husband why she must suddenly leave home because a spirit called her a mankiller. She describes her fear at the words, being spoken, becoming real.
• Closeness of family/tribalology: The events of the novel do not just draw together the separated Billy family, they also draw together the community in Durant and, eventually, the eastern and western divisions of the Choctaw. Howe herself has mentioned that she has used this novel to show the tribal propensity for bringing things together. Her view of native literature states that: "Native stories...seem to pull all the elements together of the storyteller's tribe, meaning the people, the land, and multiple characters and all their manifestations and revelations, and connect these in past, present and future milieus."
• Americanization of Natives: From the priests present in the early story, to the boarding schools Susan and her aunts attended in the later tale, the attempt to Americanize Native Americans is present. While little focus is placed directly on this, it is always present in the background, especially in Auda's lecture. Recounted from memory by Adair, this scene overtly points out the novel's take on Americanization and removal as Auda is violently opposed by the white supporters of the Historical Society. Of further importance in this vein is Father Renoir's power over history. He is often seen keeping a sort of diary of his experiences with the Choctaw, but before he leaves he takes out a great deal that he feels may be embarrassing to his family and his church. His ability to change history and make it something more acceptable to the dominant society is representative of the greatest power held over Native Americans by white society.

Motifs and images

The novel also features a number of recurring motifs and images. For example, both the murders take place during the Autumnal Equinox, which has special significance to the earlier events of the novel. Likewise, burial rituals connect the two time periods featured in the book.

Smoke acts in the novel as a screen between times, becoming thicker as the stories begin to meet. Birds continually appear throughout the novel, which also relays the story of the Grandmother of Birds who turned into a bird to punish Spanish invaders after her husband was killed.

Literary significance and reception

The novel has been commended for the way it stresses the importance of history in the current lives of a Native American group as they struggle in the quest of decolonization. Taos Pueblo scholar and critic P. Jane Hafen said of the novel in 2002: "Howe seamlessly integrates a history of desperate and gruesome fights for survival with modern Faustian pacts with materialism and wealth. At the heart of the story are generations of Choctaw peoples who preserve with ritual gestures of 'life everlasting'"

Shell Shaker furthermore stands out as one of the few novels to focus on Choctaw history from the point of view of a native author. Ken McCullough has said of the novel "Although there has been significant scholarship on this historical period in the southeast, between the arrival of De Soto and Removal, no one has written a work of the imagination (of this magnitude) set in this period"

The novel presents characters separate from the ideas present in American culture. "The variations in voice among the protagonists show that Howe knows how to imagine different characters, and those figures confirm and challenge stereotypes about Native Americans in a way that can only be productive for all readers."

Writing style and literary techniques

The story opens from the point of view of Shakbatina who narrates the story of her own death. Apart from two later chapters, the rest are not explicitly listed as being told by her, but they are all from a third person narrative. This change of point of view maintains the storytelling aspect of Choctaw tradition while giving voices to the characters themselves, not to one describing them.

Repetition is used throughout the novel, in both situations and quotes, to establish connections between the generations. An example of this is the often repeated "ten thousand feet of intestines hanging from trees in Yanabi Town," the explanation of which is only given at the novel's end. Articles such as the porcupine sash and turtle shells pass down through generations as their imagery passes through the novel. The repetition of the images connect generations to enforce the overreaching themes of time's circular nature and the connection of people.

Memories and flashbacks are also used to establish connections. They become increasingly long and common as the story develops, as the Billy family attempts to piece together the story of the past. Writer Lucy Maddox sees the importance of memory as one of the major purposes of the novel, as it "alternates scenes from present and past, conflating ancestral lives and contemporary ones to produce stories about the ways in which identity is both constructed and understood in a tribal context that makes memory more relevant than chronology"

The Choctaw language is heavily featured throughout the novel, but never without translation. This allows those with no knowledge of the language, regardless of their native status, to fully appreciate the storyline. The importance of the language is established from the beginning, as the novel's opening lines are in the Choctaw language. From there, the novel's important themes are illustrated by the language, including that of the bloodsucker (osano) and the search for the greatest giver, or Imataha Chitto.

The classical trickster character is also used. Grandmother Porcupine serves as both a comic relief while imparting necessary knowledge to those she wants to have it, namely Isaac, Hoppy, and Nick. She claims to be an animal spirit, over 400 years old and a protector of the family. Fitting with the Native American trickster idea, she represents "an openness to life's multiplicity and paradoxes"

Criticisms

One major criticism possible with the novel is the corrupt portrayal of non-Native people. While the French have a favorable portrayal in the character of Bienville, the English are constantly listed as an enemy (the Inklish okla). It is important to note that the only British character, Borden, is a positive one, and is accepted by his wife's family at novel's end. The stereotypical images of the Italian mobsters and Irish gangsters are also questionable. It can be argued, however, in the book, "corruption [is not] necessarily a condition of Americans and American society overall, and if it is, then American Indians are participants, not exempt"

The novel is also extremely graphic in its representations of sex and violence. There are scenes of rape, war and cannibalism that may prove difficult for some readers. The novel, however, has not reached mainline success and has not been featured on any banned book lists.

Awards and nominations

• American Book Award (2002) from the Before Columbus Foundation.
• 2004 finalist for Prix Médicis Estranger under its French translation "Équinoxes Rouge"
• Finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award
• Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year in Creative Prose: Fiction, LeAnne Howe

Publication history

• 2001, USA, Aunt Lute ISBN 978-1-879960-61-9, Pub date September 2001, Paperback