Beth Piatote's guest appearances

Beth Piatote

The Poetry Magazine Podcast

Think Out Loud

Townsend Center for the Humanities

Nick Kristof

Chuck Klosterman

Colson Whitehead

Michael Pollan

Ezra Klein

Tara Westover

Colin O'Brady

Frederick Douglass

Walt Whitman

Alicia Jo Rabins

Lidia Yuknavitch

George Saunders

Sam Adams

Jacqueline Woodson

Salman Rushdie

OwlTail

Esther Belin

This week, Esther Belin and Beth Piatote map out some unique qualities of the Navajo and Nez Perce languages. Piatote is a writer, scholar, and member of the Nez Perce nation, and she offers insight into the embodied experience of language revitalization. We hear her poem “1855,” which borrows language from—and interrupts—Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The year 1855 marks both the publication of Leaves of Grass and the signing of the treaty between the Nez Perce and the US, and Piatote’s poem highlights the relationship between Whitman’s vision of America and the confinement and genocide of Native people. Piatote says, “I’m a big fan of nineteenth-century literature. I love Whitman. I love Emily Dickinson. But I also recognize their specific project of making American literature and creating a type of settler colonial identity through art.” You can read “1855,” along with two other poems by Piatote, in the July/August 2022 issue of Poetry.

This week, Esther Belin and Beth Piatote map out some unique qualities of the Navajo and Nez Perce languages. Piatote is a writer, scholar, and member of the Nez Perce nation, and she offers insight into the embodied experience of language revitalization. We hear her poem “1855,” which borrows language from—and interrupts—Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The year 1855 marks both the publication of Leaves of Grass and the signing of the treaty between the Nez Perce and the US, and Piatote’s poem highlights the relationship between Whitman’s vision of America and the confinement and genocide of Native people. Piatote says, “I’m a big fan of nineteenth-century literature. I love Whitman. I love Emily Dickinson. But I also recognize their specific project of making American literature and creating a type of settler colonial identity through art.” You can read “1855,” along with two other poems by Piatote, in the July/August 2022 issue of Poetry.

Esther Belin in Conversation with Beth Piatote

In her debut short story collection, Beth Piatote (Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley) explores Native American life in the modern world. The stories find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return: a woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship; in 1890, two young men at college — one French and the other Lakota — each contemplates a death in the family; a Nez Perce-Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a reimagining of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The Beadworkers (Counterpoint, 2019) draws on indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful and sustaining vision of Native life.Piatote is joined by Kathleen Donegan (English Department).

In her debut short story collection, Beth Piatote (Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley) explores Native American life in the modern world. The stories find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return: a woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship; in 1890, two young men at college — one French and the other Lakota — each contemplates a death in the family; a Nez Perce-Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a reimagining of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The Beadworkers (Counterpoint, 2019) draws on indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful and sustaining vision of Native life. Piatote is joined by Kathleen Donegan (English Department).

Berkeley Book Chats, Beth Piatote # 22, 02/26/20

A new collection of short stories highlights the life and culture of Pacific Northwest Native Americans. “The Beadworkers,” by Nez Perce author Beth Piatote, is a stylistically diverse collection of stories spanning genres from poetry to plays.

Author Beth Piatote On “The Beadworker