Mona Susan Power in Conversation with Miriam Brown Spiers

In this conversation, Mona Susan Power talks about her writing career, the power of fiction, and her latest novel A Council of Dolls with Kennesaw State University Professor Miriam Brown Spiers. This conversation it part of The Headlight Review's interview series.

Below, Dr. Andy Plattner introduces the interview and reflects on Powers’ writing:

The first story I read by Mona Susan Power was “Snakes,” published in the 1994 spring edition of The Paris Review.  

The story begins, “Father La Frambois was anxious to baptize me in the Missouri River, to change my name from Cuwignaka Duta, or Red Dress, to the holier appellation, Esther. He was an energetic old man and vivid in color; his cheeks so brightly red they looked slapped, and his eyes a dark blue in the night sky, although dimming to black in moments of anger. I would not be coaxed into the Missouri, not even to repay him for the hours he spent teaching me to read, to write, recite, to form my thoughts into plain, desolate English until I could speak in terms more lovely than the priest.”  

The writing is rich, mesmerizing, and unforgettable. Towards the conclusion, there are lines that have stayed with me.  

Red Dress says, “I am hitched to the living, still moved by their concerns. My spirit never abandons the Dakota people, though sometimes all it can do is watch.”  

At the time of this publication, Power was a Bunting Fellow at Harvard University; her novel The Grass Dancer would be released later that year. It earned the PEN/Hemingway award and became a national bestseller. The Grass Dancer was hailed by literary luminaries of Louise Erdrich, Alice Hoffman, and Amy Tan.  

Her recently published novel, A Council of Dolls, was featured in a recent New York Times article, “After a Long and Painful Absence, Writing Her Way Home Again.”  

In this video, Power is interviewed about her latest work by Dr. Miriam Brown Spiers, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Kennesaw State University. Spiers is also Director of the M.A. in American Studies program at KSU. Her recent book, Encountering the Sovereign Other: Indigenous Science Fiction (Michigan State University Press, 2021), examines the ways that Native American novelists have adapted the generic tropes of science fiction as a means of resisting cultural assimilation and reasserting the value of Indigenous knowledges in the twenty-first century. 

Since its inception in 2019, The Headlight Review has featured author interviews with the likes of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown, acclaimed civil rights author Anthony Grooms and Philip Levine Prize winning poet, Tina Mozelle Braziel. Future interviews will feature Garrad Conley (All the World Beside, Boy Erased) and author/editor Anna Schachner.