This Is Not a Wave

Selecting the best work from an overwhelmingly talented pool of writers is a difficult task. We were honored when TCJ asked us to guest edit this edition, and as we did with Never Whistle at Night, we accepted their offer with care and reverence. We under­stood from the beginning that “best” is never a simple word in Native writing. It can mean the sharpest craft, the deepest feeling, the most daring form. It can also mean the work that speaks most urgently to this moment, or the work that carries something forward for those who come next.

The stories, essays, and poems we received confirmed both our hopes and our sense of responsibility. Here we found humor and pain, hope and awe, tenderness and teeth. We read soulful remem­brances of the past and poignant visions of what might come, along with incisive words that refuse to look away from the realities of the present. Some pieces arrived as prayer or witness. Some  arrived as laughter that catches in your throat because it recog­nizes what has been normalized. All of which is to say, this was a really hard job.

Voice, emotion. Deftness with the word. Precision and paint. Transcendence and transport from the everyday. Which stories took us out of our routines? Which poems made us forget the day? Which essays made us clear our minds and pay absolute attention to the discussion underway? Those were some of the considera­tions we had to weigh while making our selections. We would have loved to publish all of them. But in the end, we had to narrow our choices to the pieces we felt would best represent the state of new Native writing.

We find ourselves at the beginning of something special, some­thing built on the hard work of previous generations. We resist calling it a wave, as others have done with previous moments in Native literature—waves eventually break on a shore somewhere. This, then, is a groundswell, a rising of voices from everywhere, folks telling their own stories in their own ways, without regard for those who would see them differently or force them into dominant dead narratives and tired tropes.

Let’s be honest: We know the scripts. The museum voice that talks about us like we’re a finished chapter. The well-meaning pressure to make pain “worth it” by turning it into an inspirational lesson. The lazy tragedy lens that treats harm like it’s who we are. The gatekeepers who act like Native imagination is a curiosity they get to approve or deny. A lot of work in this issue sees that whole setup, refuses to play along, and goes looking for some­thing truer.

And yes, people have taken notice. The big five publishing houses, including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, have taken notice. Film and television have taken notice. Native writers are getting agent representation. Native stories are finding new readerships. Native directors, screenwriters, producers, and actors are an increasing presence in mainstream and independent media. All of this is happening now.

We want to say this plainly, though. The work didn’t arrive with the attention. The attention finally caught up to the work, late, as it tends to do. And to be clear, we’re not talking to Native writers when we say this. We’re talking to the folks who make budgetary decisions, who choose who gets a slot, a review, another printing. The gatekeepers who still act surprised when Native writing doesn’t stay inside the box they built for it.

We’ll take doors opening, of course. Access matters. But we aren’t asking for favors or flowers. We’re asking for the basics: respect, contracts that pay well, real creative control, commitment that lasts longer than a season. We’re born storytellers and have been at it for millennia. What’s changing is who can no longer get away with denying our capacity.

You are part of that change, at its forefront. The work we’ve chosen here represents your vanguard. The fiction selections move back and forth over time, bringing necessary stories into the present and refusing any one narrow idea of what Native fiction should be. The creative nonfiction pieces deal with the realities and difficulties faced in the contemporary plane, negotiating tradition with today’s demands. They show how these demands are tied to inherited knowledge, structural violence, and the care that carries us through. And the poetry? The poems sing songs of who we are and where we come from, but also what keeps us here. They do it with joy, power, and tenderness.

This, then, is part of the way forward. Where we’re from, where we’re at, and where we’re headed are stories in our hands, our control. Know your writers, speak their names. Share the work. Teach it, learn from it. Make spaces for those voices and words wherever and whenever you can. Help the stories sing across time and project us into the future. Measure this groundswell by what we do next, and what we do after that.

Again, and again.