April 6th, 2022- Zahir Janmohamed was moved by Morgan Talty’s short story “Burn” that appeared in Narrative Magazine and was featured as story of the week. Janmohamed, who is a writer, Ashley Bryan Fellow, and Visiting Professor of English at Bowdoin College, wrote this about the story:

“Morgan Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine, complicates the story of Native Americans in Burn. He does this, I believe, by giving his characters agency and subjectivity. They push up against the erasure and violence committed against them, but they also do it to themselves, too. As he writes, ‘Natives damning natives.’ Talty's characters are flawed and contradictory, which is to say, they are very human. His debut story collection, Night of the Living Rez, comes out this summer and I can't wait to read it.”

An excerpt from Burn:

“At the bridge to the reservation, the river was still frozen, ice shining white-blue under a full moon. The sidewalk on the bridge hadn’t been shoveled since the last nor’easter crapped snow in November, and I walked in the boot prints everyone made who walked the walk to Overtown to get pot or catch the bus to wherever it was us Indians had to go, which really wasn’t anywhere because everything we needed—except pot—was on the rez. Well, except the grocery store or Best Buy or Bed Bath & Beyond, but those natives who bought 4K Ultra DVDs or fresh white doilies had cars, wouldn’t be taking the bus like me or Fellis did each day to the methadone clinic. That was another thing the rez didn’t have: a methadone clinic. But we had sacred grounds where sweats and peyote ceremonies happened once a month, except since I had chosen to take methadone, I was ineligible to participate in native spiritual practice, according to the doc on the rez.

Natives damning natives.”

You can read the full piece here on Narrative Magazine’s website

“Burn” by Morgan Talty