Navajos Wear Nikes A Reservation Life eBook Jim Kristofic
Download As PDF : Navajos Wear Nikes A Reservation Life eBook Jim Kristofic 
Just before starting second grade, Jim Kristofic moved from Pittsburgh across the country to Ganado, Arizona, when his mother took a job at a hospital on the Navajo Reservation. Navajos Wear Nikes reveals the complexity of modern life on the Navajo Reservation, a world where Anglo and Navajo coexisted in a tenuous truce. After the births of his Navajo half-siblings, Jim and his family moved off the Reservation to an Arizona border town where they struggled to readapt to an Anglo world that no longer felt like home.
With tales of gangs and skinwalkers, an Indian Boy Scout troop, a fanatical Sunday school teacher, and the author’s own experience of sincere friendships that lead to hózhó (beautiful harmony), Kristofic’s memoir is an honest portrait of growing up on—and growing to love—the Reservation.
ACCLAIM
"Few regionally tied autobiographies have shown as much wit and keen observation as Navajos Wear Nikes by Jim Kristofic." -- Arizona Daily Sun
"Jim Kristofic combines the spirits of Joseph Campbell and J. D. Salinger to give readers an intimate look at the complexity of life in Navajo country." -- Martha Blue, author of Indian Trader The Life and Times of J. L. Hubbell
"The story of how a minority overcame prejudice and made lifelong friends in the process will resonate with many teens." -- Booklist
"This is a story told on many levels. It can be brutally frank, irreverent in places, and funny in others. But it is so serious that it will hold the reader’s attention from beginning to end. It brings to Native life a strongly personal and emotional aspect seldom seen, and it will persist in memory long after a first reading." -- David Brugge, author of The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute An American Tragedy
Navajos Wear Nikes A Reservation Life eBook Jim Kristofic
The buildup before seven-year-old Jim moves from urban Pittsburgh to the very rural Northern Arizona Navajo reservation helps to lay the foundation for the book; Anglo Americans’ fundamental (mis)beliefs about Indians based on history, legends and contemporary views on alcohol consumption and casinos. The reader is then taken on a path of discovery along with Jim, as he learns how wrong these preconceived notions are. In fact, there isn’t even such a people as “Indians”.When he first arrives, Jim makes friends in his new neighborhood and is lulled into a false sense that Rez kids are just like him, until his first day at school when he feels he’s been ambushed and describes his new classmates as Indians that stowed tomahawks in their backpacks among their three-ring binders.
The humor and realistic fears of this young boy endear the readers from the start, but a defining moment is his loyalty to his mom. Knowing all she had to go through back in Pittsburgh to maintain life for him and his brother, Jim assures his mom that his first day at primary school was okay even though it was full of teasing, playground fistfights and a ripped shirt.
As Jim comes to understand what it means to be a Navajo and the White Apple trying to fit in, he struggles with a strength of racism he never experienced in the urban jungle. But as he learns the natural beliefs and legends that define the Diné, he finally finds his place, being a Tough Noodle, roughhousing without crying, and teasing like the rest of the Navajo kids.
When many years later his mother takes a job off the reservation and he is forced to move to a border town, he realizes just how accustomed he has become to the Navajo ways. In a new school of 40% whites, Jim finds he is no longer in either camp (the new Navajos didn’t consider him one of them, even though he himself did, and he didn’t want to be associated with the whites) and experiences firsthand Anglo racism towards Navajo.
Throughout his life, his heart always lay with his friends on the Rez, and it draws him back again and again for visits, camping trips, journalism and teaching.
The author’s vivid retelling of events and characters and lyrical blending of English, Rez English and Navajo dialect transports the reader to the Four Corners under the turquoise skies among the sagebrush and coyotes. Kristofic’s depictions of the Navajo people, such as when he says they paint with all the colors of the wind, raises this tale from a simple autobiography to a work of art. You can see the author’s love of wildlife and nature in his descriptions. It leaves the reader both fully satisfied in their experience with the Navajo Reservation as well as wanting more once the book ends.
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Navajos Wear Nikes A Reservation Life eBook Jim Kristofic Reviews
Had its good moments, especially towards the end. The author did pretty good with his dineh bizaad, could tell he really tried hard, it's a hard language..only someone born into it can fully enunciate the words correctly. . Although, the "Anglo world" really can't fully grasp our beliefs or, what makes us tick..it's really no body's business and shouldn't be left to ponder upon. But, we live day to day and try to make the best in both worlds.
This book was suggested to me by my sister-in-law who actually knew the author and attended the same school on the Navajo Reservation. Since I also attended the same high school, I was interested in what this book had to offer. To my surprise and several good laughs, I have to admit this was a good book about a non-Native American who is the minority. His trial and tribulation of trying to be accepted into a culture that treated him as a nuisance had its share of humor. After learning the culture and language, the author was accepted, but also learned a valuable lesson about how it feels to view the world after he left the reservation to attend college.
I read this book in three days while on vacation,having saved it for that occasion, and it called me back quickly every time I had to put it down. Having had some previous knowledge of Navajo culture from other books I've read, I was really looking forward to Mr. Kristofic's life growing up on the Rez. I felt like I had been invited into the heart of someone very special, and allowed to experience his growing up years in a very intimate way. His love and respect for The People shine through every passage, and he illuminates alot of the Navajo beliefs and customs that I had just touched on before. All the terms and explanations in the back of the book, along with historical references, helped my understanding, also. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and maybe enjoy may not be the right word, because this very touching book will always stay with you - you will not forget the lessons that Jim learned with his many friends and relatives. The hawk, the football teams, the Rez dogs, his new brother and sister, Nolan, the Sacred Mountains, and Jim, himself, will find a place in your heart. I highly recommend this book, and hope that someday Jim might write another book about the Dine' and their proud and resiliant spirit. Thank you, Jim.
I enjoyed this tender, well-written memoir very much. Mr. Kristofic's coming-of-age tale relates a world so many Anglos know too little about. Amazingly, the author manages to walk the line between being effusive in his appreciation for his adopted life and any potential criticism of the Navajo. Rather, he presents a clear-eyed portrait of a people and an environment he came to love. I was charmed by the episodes Kristofic chose to recount. From the opening pages, I liked the second-grade boy who is transplanted to the desert against his will. The boy, and the man he becomes, is keenly observant, self-effacing, and accepting. While there is nothing unique here (transferring into a new school, enduring the agonies of football as an undersized kid, figuring out who you are and wanting to be accepted at the same time), the author freshly presents these rites of passage. That they are set against a southwestern backdrop and peppered with fascinating historical facts about the Navajo only added to my enjoyment.
Mr. Kristofic's prose is crisp and sparse. Not a word is wasted. His ear for dialogue is spot on, whether it is capturing the verbal volley of a bully and his victim or teenagers out on a night of aggressive play or an exchange between Anglos and Navajo.
The author effectively represented the beauty of both the place in which he found himself, as well as its people. I was privileged to inhabit his world for the days I spent reading Navajos Wear Nikes. Even after having read so much of his life, I longed to know more, to know this person better. I also wanted to know more about the Navajo. This is an interesting and touching memoir.
The buildup before seven-year-old Jim moves from urban Pittsburgh to the very rural Northern Arizona Navajo reservation helps to lay the foundation for the book; Anglo Americans’ fundamental (mis)beliefs about Indians based on history, legends and contemporary views on alcohol consumption and casinos. The reader is then taken on a path of discovery along with Jim, as he learns how wrong these preconceived notions are. In fact, there isn’t even such a people as “Indians”.
When he first arrives, Jim makes friends in his new neighborhood and is lulled into a false sense that Rez kids are just like him, until his first day at school when he feels he’s been ambushed and describes his new classmates as Indians that stowed tomahawks in their backpacks among their three-ring binders.
The humor and realistic fears of this young boy endear the readers from the start, but a defining moment is his loyalty to his mom. Knowing all she had to go through back in Pittsburgh to maintain life for him and his brother, Jim assures his mom that his first day at primary school was okay even though it was full of teasing, playground fistfights and a ripped shirt.
As Jim comes to understand what it means to be a Navajo and the White Apple trying to fit in, he struggles with a strength of racism he never experienced in the urban jungle. But as he learns the natural beliefs and legends that define the Diné, he finally finds his place, being a Tough Noodle, roughhousing without crying, and teasing like the rest of the Navajo kids.
When many years later his mother takes a job off the reservation and he is forced to move to a border town, he realizes just how accustomed he has become to the Navajo ways. In a new school of 40% whites, Jim finds he is no longer in either camp (the new Navajos didn’t consider him one of them, even though he himself did, and he didn’t want to be associated with the whites) and experiences firsthand Anglo racism towards Navajo.
Throughout his life, his heart always lay with his friends on the Rez, and it draws him back again and again for visits, camping trips, journalism and teaching.
The author’s vivid retelling of events and characters and lyrical blending of English, Rez English and Navajo dialect transports the reader to the Four Corners under the turquoise skies among the sagebrush and coyotes. Kristofic’s depictions of the Navajo people, such as when he says they paint with all the colors of the wind, raises this tale from a simple autobiography to a work of art. You can see the author’s love of wildlife and nature in his descriptions. It leaves the reader both fully satisfied in their experience with the Navajo Reservation as well as wanting more once the book ends.
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