SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Riding the Trail of Tears by Blake M. Hausman: https://t.co/WifNB8KlWF
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 22, 2022
Short Review: 9 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A story featuring a virtual reality recreation of the Trail of Tears, meant ostensibly for education but transformed into entertainment, as its "virtual" inhabitants go rogue during a trip led by a real indigenous tour guide. Strong & Highly recommended
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 22, 2022
2/3
Riding the Trail of Tears is a 2011 novel by author Blake M. Hausman, a member of the Cherokee Tribe (and per his bio, half-Jewish as well). The novel features a part Cherokee protagonist who helped design and works as a tour guide on a virtual reality tourist attraction in which tourists are placed in the role of indigenous peoples displaced during the Trail of Tears. The concept and some of the themes will ring a bell to those who have read Rebecca Roanhorse's later award winning short story Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience.
But Riding the Trail of Tears goes a lot farther than Roanhorse's story - and not just because of the fact that its a full novel instead of a short story. There's a greater examination of appropriation in this story, not least of which because the virtual reality experience being given here is supposedly meant to be a historical reenactment of the atrocity of the Trail of Tears, but the story includes more than that - long forgotten indigenous spirits, grieving for things lost not only due to the colonial invaders, and both negative and positive reactions of those who are outsiders to the things lost within. The story also ends on a more positive note, as its main character is transformed by the experience, despite the events that occur within.
More specifics after the jump:
-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Tallulah Wilson's Cherokee grandfather had an idea - equipping a Jeep Cherokee with TVs to show the rider the experience of the Trail of Tears. Years later, that idea was sold to a rich white businessman, who, with the help of Tallulah's historical research and knowledge, transformed it into a virtual reality tourist attraction, where tour guides like Tallulah take guests through the experiences of the indigenous people forced to walk the Trail of Tears....with some modifications for comfort of course. Tallulah is the best tour guide of them all, losing fewer guests than anyone else to the brutal forced journey, sometimes she takes pride in....even if something about the job makes her feel hollow and badly needing a vacation.
But something strange is happening in the Trail of Tears ride, as long forgotten Cherokee Little Little People begin to use the ride to interfere with reality. Soon tourists are finding themselves holed out, in comatose states after the ride is over, and no one can figure out why, with others believing that this is the result of some strange terrorist attack. But Tallulah has never experienced the problem on one of her rides.....until her last one before her vacation, on a trip through what's supposed to be the least dangerous setting of the ride, when everything goes off the rails, and Tallulah realizes the experience she helped create is looking to escape the recurring horrors of the past in search of a home for the future......
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Riding the Trail of Tears starts with the narration of a questionable narrator, one of the Cherokee Little Little People explaining obliquely what actually happened before the story even begins. But really, this is the story of Tallulah and the people on the Trail of Tears, and of what those stories really tell us. And those stories tell us a lot, especially in this novel.
Tallulah's story is that of someone who is deeply invested in her own heritage and who also has sort of unrealizingly lost something about it in her path through it. She first found her heritage through her grandparents she never knew (thanks to her Cherokee father pretending they were dead before he died), and really did research the history of the Trail of Tears and indigenous peoples, after having come to tears viewing her grandfather's homemade idea of the ride. But over time, she's come to view being a tour guide for this - not sterilized exactly, since it is very much a brutal ride at times, but still a toned down ride in ways mean to please guests (see below) - as its own reward and has pride in keeping people alive through it, even if that's really not the point of what the ride is supposed to mean. Her boyfriend, a half-indigenous (Tallulah is technically a quarter) boy, sort of gets this and has quit working for the ride repeatedly, but she hasn't really thought about it, even as she's eager to go on a break.
And then there's the Trail of Tears ride itself, which is something. On one hand there's a simulation there that could absolutely do good in the right context, by putting people in the shoes (literally) of those forced to relocate under brutal conditions. On the other hand, it's a ride that has been so adapted to tickle the comforts of its riders that that meaning gets lost in it all. So the ride has different levels of brutality for different people (less brutality for kids for example), different experiences for richer customers, and naturally endows people with greater sexual attributes inside the ride to make them feel better. And then there's the "Old Medicine Man" who comforts those who die in the ride - or those who finish it - and tells them exactly what they want to hear. And so you get a ride that is educational for those really make an effort but also is one that enables people to be who they are, which allows them all too often to not learn from the pain of the indigenous people suffering all around them, but to enjoy it and to take advantage of it (in one dark dark example).
And so there we come to the difference between this book and the Roanhorse story, which ends with the native experience being taken over fully by the colonizing interloper and the indigenous protagonist being frozen out. In this book the virtual indigenous people, the ones who are dying and resetting over and over in the ride, guided by the spirits of their people, even the ones they forgot before the white men came (an interesting note on how the loss of their culture is in some part their own fault, not just the fault of their colonizers), take action, using one of Tallulah's tourists, as well as Tallulah's words herself, as a guide. They make a break for it for something different, and in seeing this, and in seeing this all happen, Tallulah realizes what she's lost through it all, and makes a change in going forward, just like the virtual peoples did. And so they find a way forward with their culture away from the colonizing influences.
It's a fascinating book and I highly recommend it if you can find a copy.
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