Cheyenne Madonna
Reissue available Spring 2021
Eddie Chuculate has won PEN/O. Henry Prize and Pushcart Prize citations for his short fiction. A Creek and Cherokee Indian from Muskogee, Oklahoma, he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, held a Wallace Stegner Fellowshsip at Stanford University, and is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Chuculate was the second Native American to ever hold the prestigious Stegner Fellowship. While working as a pecan picker and furniture mover, Chuculate became a sportswriter and eventually served as an editor at various newspapers, including those in Denver, Tulsa, Albuquerque, and Abu Dhabi. He’s currently an editor at the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis.
Praise for Cheyenne Madonna
“Eddie Chuculate emerges as an important new talent in his
generation of storytellers. He’s a kind of journalist of the soul
as he investigates the broken-hearted nation of Indian men. The
epicenter of action is the tenuous meeting place between boyhood
and manhood, between fierce need and desire. Chuculate relates a
world that is exactly what it is, with no romantic savage junk, and
no temporary spiritual life preservers. In the midst of despair
there’s a shrine of meaning that surfaces, like the miracle of
sunrise after an all-night party.”—Joy Harjo, United States Poet
Laureate
“Where are we, among these coyote mirages, this endless herd of
antelope? What is this beautiful place? Is it the land of magical
realism? Not exactly. It’s a bit north of that. The tone of
Chuculate’s narration is serene and buoyant, a rare mood at
present. Mozart might be a useful model to think of. Every sentence
is unexpected, yet infallible. The ultimate aim of the short story,
like the arrow, is to end exactly where it should. In art, the
satisfaction of hitting the bull’s-eye is not a simple one. It goes
deep.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, National Book Award and Hugo Award
winner
“Chuculate presents a profound disconnect between the mythology of
Indian art and the present-day reality of Indian artists, who
rarely get to be artists without the cultural qualifier. He also
lays bare the effects of wide-spread multi-generational addiction
without making excuses for the way his characters treat each other.
There are no saints in here, and no demons, either. Cheyenne
Madonna is a fantastic debut.”—The Santa Fe New Mexican
“An amazing, moving debut—rich, thoughtful, eloquent and
honest.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Chuculate writes forthright prose in a somber key, examining
without judgment the lives of Native American characters like Old
Bull, a Cheyenne who, in ‘Galveston Bay, 1826,’ the collection’s
one stand-alone story, ventures out to see the ocean for the first
time, only to get savaged by a hurricane. Memory and will converge
here to powerful effect.”—Publishers Weekly
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