PAIGE RIEHL: Thank you, Mona, for talking with me about your award-winning novel A Council of Dolls! Your novel is powerful and moving—a compelling story of family, coming-of-age, love, and historical and generational trauma. In A Council of Dolls, through the stories of three generations of women in one Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakhóta family, readers are taken on a powerful historical and familial journey, one that is filled with trauma and loss, but ultimately becomes a story of the protagonist’s healing.  

I have so many questions! Let’s start with the inspiration for the book. The first section of the novel was published in an earlier version as a short story in the Missouri Review where it was fiction runner-up in the 2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize contest (“Naming Ceremony”). What inspired you to write the initial story in the voice of the 7-year-old protagonist Sissy? She’s such a compelling narrator. What are the challenges of writing in such a young voice?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

Thank you so much for your generous interest in my work, including this latest novel, and for all your thoughtful questions!

I find it natural to write in the voice of a child perhaps because I’m still so in touch with my younger self. I’ve been working to heal emotional and psychological wounds going back to childhood, and the little girl version of me shows herself sometimes when old injuries rise up again to be sorted. I tried to be careful with Sissy’s vocabulary, aiming to believably narrate in the voice of a young girl, though granted myself some leeway since her father is a writer and her mother a bit of a storyteller.

PAIGE RIEHL: It definitely worked! Sissy is such a believable and compelling child narrator, and I loved that we get to know her as both child and adult. After the first part of the novel, which focuses on Sissy’s childhood in the 1960s, Part 2 is Lillian’s story (Sissy’s mother) in the 1930s, and Part 3 is Cora’s experience (Sissy’s grandmother) in the 1900s. Readers move back through the generations until Part 4, which returns to Sissy, (who has changed her name to Jesse) and is set in the 2010s. When you expanded the story into a novel, how did you decide to move through the generations to tell Sissy’s mother and grandmother’s stories rather than telling a chronological account of Sissy’s life? As a writer, how do you decide what path the longer prose should take when there are so many options? Did you have a sense early on that there would be four parts?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

Initially I thought I’d expand upon the 1960’s part of the story and remain in that era. But as I began dreaming up episodes, I realized that the mother character might be judged by readers for her challenging behavior. I didn’t want her to be seen as a villain. So I thought, What if I include a section set during her childhood? Readers might have more compassion for her when they see what she endured as a child. As I worked on her section, her father Jack became the problematic parental figure, and I didn’t want him to be judged harshly. So I settled on having three sections set during different eras in one family’s history. I planned to organize the first three sections of the novel in chronological order. But upon reflection, I thought it would be more revelatory to move backward in time, helping readers understand in a more surprising, visceral way, how much the past is never truly past.

Once I understood I was working on a novel, I knew I wanted a fourth section that would bring the Sissy character into adulthood. I didn’t want a book that left the characters in trauma—there had to be a healing section. The entire point of the story, for me, was that healing is possible. Which echoes my personal experience.

PAIGE RIEHL: Starting with Sissy during her childhood and then moving back in time through the generations created a unique sense that I was excavating the history of the family and unearthing why characters developed into the adults they become. Readers know who, what, and when, but this strategy helps uncover the why. You’re right that the revelation of their own histories—the injustice, the suffering, the trauma—meant that these characters were so round and complex one can’t judge them too harshly. For example, at times, Lillian treats her daughter Sissy callously, even abusively, in Part 1. Then in Part 2, readers unearth Lillian’s history and the traumatic experiences she has in her youth, which sheds light on how she became such a complex person with unpredictable moods and reactions. Were you conscious of putting a reader in Sissy/Jesse’s shoes as she too is mining and reconstructing her family history and finding her path through grief, forgiveness, and healing?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

Yes. It was important for Sissy’s healing process that she understand why her parents behaved as they did. In particular: how did her mother die? She wasn’t entirely certain since she’d closed her eyes before it happened. Beyond that, she needed to understand the dynamics in her family, the history that helped shape them, in order to forgive them, forgive herself. These challenging family dynamics echo my own experience—my lifetime journey to heal the angry, frightened, confused, self-loathing little girl forever within me. The girl who had to look after herself in dangerous situations, find the means to soothe herself. She developed some healthy habits (such as leaning into creativity and self-expression through the Arts to release negative emotions), and unhealthy habits (the development of an ugly inner script that parroted the verbal abuse her mother sometimes shouted at her, and an anxious hyper vigilance). I needed to allow myself to feel anger towards a parent I adored, but also find the means to preserve the deep love between us. The only way I could honor both impulses was to dig beneath the surface of my memories, and view loaded events from the past with compassion.

PAIGE RIEHL: In your author’s note, you explain your extensive research and personal connections to historical facts, such as the separation of Indigenous children from their parents via government-mandated boarding schools. Lillian and Cora are wrenched from their parents and siblings, homes, community, culture, and spirituality and taken to boarding schools where children are beaten for breaking rules, jailed for attempted escapes, and some perish from disease and starvation.

In your novel, children’s beloved belongings, such as dolls and letters from parents, are burned in a barrel on the day of their arrival at boarding school. This and other cruelty illustrate the long-term impact of this abuse, not only on those who lived them but in the ways that the trauma is passed down to children and grandchildren. What role do you think fiction has in expanding the historical narrative? Is there a way that fiction can fill in the gaps and perhaps reach a wider audience than nonfiction can about the machinations of colonization and effects of generational trauma?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

I’ve learned to have a great deal of respect for the power of fictional stories in terms of bringing history to life in a way that makes more of an impact than some history texts. There are talented historians who can bring the past to vivid life in their writing, but sometimes such texts are more a recitation of dates and names, with so many real-life players thrown at us in flat, undeveloped ways, we know little beyond a few facts of their existence. In these instances, it can be difficult to believe in the “characters” of history, and fully grasp their humanity. Fiction can offer readers the chance to imagine more clearly what it felt like going through traumatic experiences.

PAIGE RIEHL: Ah, you’re so right that the flat facts of history often don’t evoke the connection that fiction can. Your novel so effectively demonstrates how the generational forced assimilation of these characters into white culture attempts to strip away Indigenous and tribal identity. The characters’ struggles to reclaim their identity is woven throughout the narrative, although I pause at the word “reclaim.” Is it a reclamation? A discovery? Or something else? Is the reclamation of individual identity crucial for the collective, such as tribal identity?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

Responding purely from my own perspective and experience, and not claiming to speak for anyone else on this major topic: Forced assimilation is traumatic. Forced assimilation kills a people’s spirit. Forced assimilation of an entire group is a Collective Trauma, undermining the sociocultural integrity of families and communities. In my novel, the characters aren’t seeking to reclaim their identities, so much as our traditional wholeness. There was a calculated dismantling of the fabric of our societies. We were told that everything that held meaning for us in life, everything that brought healing in difficult circumstances, was wrong, ridiculous, evil, and ultimately made illegal. We were not legally allowed to practice our traditional spiritual ways, our healing ceremonies, until passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978. What is especially heinous is that the society seeking to replace traditional Indigenous lifeways with another program and mindset, was itself so unhealthy in terms of its values, that we now find our world at the edge of environmental collapse. I attended Catholic School until midway through the 5^th grade, and a very secular school for 7^th through 12^th grade. At both academies, the belief system informing my education placed Man at the top of a pyramid ranking the importance of the world’s beings; preserving Man’s right to subjugate and exploit every other form of life, depending upon our needs, desires, and whims. This attitude goes against everything I was taught at home about Indigenous values.

PAIGE RIEHL:  The significance of names as an integral part of identity is omnipresent in A Council of Dolls. On the first page, Sissy thinks “I almost forgot what my real name is.” She has a Dakhóta name (Wanáȟča Wašté Win, meaning “Woman Whose Good Works Bring Flowers,” the same name as her grandmother); a Christian/legal name (Lillian, called Lilly, named after her mother); and a frequently used nickname (Sissy). When she’s in trouble, her mother calls her Prunella, à la the wicked stepsister in Cinderella. In the end, Sissy changes her name to Jesse and reflects upon how when she was young, she “didn’t know for sure who I was, given the many names I was called” (207). Will you speak a little more about the importance of names/naming for these characters? Jesse’s choice to rename herself in the end, for example, feels pivotal for her as a dynamic character.

MONA SUSAN POWER:

PAIGE RIEHL (Follow up): I love that idea of a “true” name! That leads me to a question about your name. When we first met many years ago, you were my mentor for The Loft Literary Center Mentor Series (and thank you for your endless wisdom and grace!). Then, you went by Susan Power, which was also the name you used for your first three books—The Grass Dancer (Penguin, 1997), Roofwalker (Milkweed, 2004), and Sacred Wilderness (Michigan State University Press, 2014). Will you speak about your shift to Mona Susan Power since naming is such an important part of A Council of Dolls? Your mother’s name was Susan Kelly Power, which is similar to Sissy’s experience in being named after her mother too and her eventual name change at the end. Did your personal name change coincide with writing this book?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

Thank you, again, for your kind words about our experience together all those years ago! I was fortunate to work with all of you.

I’ve never felt that my birth name, which is still my legal name, “Susan Power,” belongs to me. It’s my mother’s name. In the Indian community of Chicago people called us “Big Susie,” and “Little Susie,” which was sweet. I never minded that in the least. But it echoed something I was experiencing at home: my mother didn’t always see me as fully distinct from herself. She often didn’t seem to know or understand the “true” version of me. I felt lost in that name. In 2002 a friend asked me, “Well, if ‘Susan’ doesn’t feel like your real name, what is it?” Without thinking, I said, “Mona.” Which took me by surprise, because I’d always preferred names that are gender neutral in our culture, names like “Jesse” or “Jordan.” This friend addressed me as “Mona” from that point on. By 2014 I decided to make the shift on a larger scale, though not legally changing my name because the process is a real pain. I changed the name on email and social media. I use “Mona” as my preferred name, though preserve “Susan” in the middle to remain connected to my earlier published work. If I weren’t a writer, I’d eject “Susan” completely. Psychologically, this name shift helps me stand firmly apart from my beloved mother. I’ve granted myself a separate identity, my own space.

PAIGE RIEHL: Although A Council of Dolls is fiction,are there ways in which Sissy/Jesse’s character is drawn from or inspired by elements of your own life? I noticed several similarities: Like Sissy/Jesse,you grew up in Chicago; you’re a writer whose first book won a major literary award; you’ve said you’re an introvert; you live in St. Paul; and more. Do you find parts of your personality and experiences and/or the experiences of your family members inspire or are reflected in other characters of the novel?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

As you’ve no doubt gleaned from earlier responses, this novel was heavily inspired by my lived experience, and by my family’s history. It’s a blend of real life and fiction. In certain places I made choices that would help me leap into fiction, so I wouldn’t be held back from imagining where the story and characters needed to go, in ways that might deviate from my familiar turf. There were times I was concerned by how closely I connected with the Sissy character, and how this novel would open my life to readers in a more intimate way than previous projects. Ultimately, I trusted my inspiration. I’m an intuitive writer—I follow what shows up for me when I sit down to write. This was a novel I feel I was meant to write, not only for myself, but for others who identify with the experiences of three generations of children. After it was written, I understood that the publication of this story offers me a platform to speak about my own struggles on the path toward healing. I want others to know that healing is possible, and not an unattainable dream.

PAIGE RIEHL: Thank you so much. I love that the novel concludes with that sense of hope and healing. Shifting gears here, the importance of language is a thread that connects these generations, the characters’ stories, and their lived experiences of language being weaponized. Lillian’s father Jack recalls being whipped for speaking Dakhótiyapi at boarding school, and to get through it, Jack would think about how his abusers’ “spirit isn’t big enough to walk in our words. They hold mysteries you can only understand with the heart” (79). How did exploring the significance of language become such a crucial part of the novel? Was it a conscious choice or an organic one because of how central language is in your life as a writer and teacher?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

From earliest memory I longed to read. My parents met in the world of publishing, and books and unpublished galleys, surrounded me like fascinating, mysterious walls. I would stare at the pages of library books at age three, willing myself to figure out the code and gain entry to meaning (I was granted my first library card at the age of two because librarians saw how respectfully I treated books). Language, poetry, the rhythms of sentences, were, and are, everything to me. I was raised speaking English, but I also had a large vocabulary of Dakhóta and Lakȟóta words my mother used in our daily interactions. She didn’t speak either dialect fluently, the Indian Boarding School experience disrupted her retaining that gift. But we connected to our traditional language via these remembered, and treasured, fragments. Language was central to my identity from the very beginning. I lived inside words and the stories they created. I carried books with me everywhere. This focus on language is my air, rather than an intellectual choice. And I understand now how much is lost to the world when a language is gone. For example, North American Indigenous languages contain so much information about territory—an area’s history, what remedies it offers, what protections it requires, what resources it supplies and how to avoid overstraining that supply. There are thousands of years of encyclopedic knowledge contained in words that non-Natives sought to eradicate from our memories, including our philosophies.

PAIGE RIEHL: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the dolls! Each woman as a young girl—Sissy, Lillian, and Cora—has a doll that leaves a lasting impact. Sissy’s father buys her a small doll she names Ethel, Lillian’s is a Shirley Temple doll she names Mae, and Cora’s is a homemade doll named Winona. (There’s even a carrot made into a doll named Glory for a young dying girl.) Many of these dolls are taken from the girls in traumatic ways, which is particularly hard because in varying degrees, the girls feel their dolls are imbued with life. The girls hear their dolls whisper, Mae dances on a teacher’s desk, and Winona’s heart beats. I won’t give away all the twists and turns, of course! Did you have any hesitation about instilling these dolls with lifelike characteristics, visible at least for the girls who loved them? I’m thinking of how literature and film is peppered with scary stories of dolls coming to life. How did you approach their creation?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

When I was a girl, I was raised by my mother to see everything in the world as potentially alive, imbued with spirit. There was no such thing as “animate” versus “inanimate.” I had to be as respectful of a rock, as I would be a blade of grass. (An early lesson was never to pluck grass from the ground or branches off bushes, because that would be like yanking out someone’s hair.) Given this perspective, my dolls were alive and had feelings, the ancient stuffed animals we rescued from the Salvation Army had fascinating histories and preferences—such as which toy to sit beside (some of them needed to be separated or they’d get into fights). I haven’t lost this sense of mystery and wonder. The girls in my novel reflect my own vision—the world is just as alive for them. Their dolls have spirit.

When I was writing the final section of the book, where the dolls get to share some of their own thoughts and histories, I was fascinated to see how differently they showed up for our “collaboration.” The Tiny Thumbelina doll, Ethel, which I’d had as a child, was open with me from the start, though shielding me from learning what happened to the mother character until years after I first wrote “Naming Ceremony” as a standalone story. The Shirley Temple doll, Mae, was the most voluble. Perhaps because she was fashioned after a Hollywood star, and shared some of that comfort with the spotlight, she chattered endlessly as I typed her story. Page after page after page. I finally said aloud, “You can’t take over the entire book, my dear.” And wrapped up her section. The Dakhóta doll, Winona, took me longer to understand, even though we come from the same tribal nation. She was reticent to open in my imagination as I worked to type her story. Almost as if she didn’t yet trust me. Did I have good intentions? Why did I want to know about her past? I came to understand that she is the most traumatized of the dolls, having witnessed a massacre of my people at White Stone Hill. She’d tried to protect generations of girls. Ultimately, it seemed I won her trust by not foisting my will upon the page, rather waiting patiently until I felt I’d hit upon the “truth” of her experience. Then she showed me, in pictures, so much I would never have guessed…

PAIGE RIEHL: Also, I love that in Part 4 we get the dolls’ stories! Why did you feel it was important to include their narratives and to have Jesse tell their stories?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

I’m so glad you liked their stories! To be honest, I felt I didn’t really have a choice except to include their narratives. Especially when it comes to the voice of Ethel, since she’s the sole witness to the death of Sissy’s mother. Sissy closed her eyes at the final moment, and Ethel tells her that she took care of things, without explaining what that means. I didn’t even know the truth of what happened when the story was complete and published as a standalone piece. I left it up to the reader to decide for themselves. When I worked on expanding the story into a novel, I “interviewed” Ethel, asked her to tell me what happened. The dolls are such an integral part of these girls’ stories, and are so alive and real to them, echoing how alive and real my own dolls and stuffed animals were to me as a child. I had to honor their voices, their spirits, and listen to what they had to say. Even for those who don’t believe a beloved toy can house “spirit,” one could view the dolls as evidence of the creativity of children—how some children manifest the ally they need via their imagination.

PAIGE RIEHL: As a writer,what are your thoughts about designating books into specific genres? It’s helpful, even necessary, I suppose, for marketing and ease of readers finding what they’re looking for (a novel, a memoir, a book of poetry) and all of the sub-categories, but do you embrace or resist these sorts of labels? I am thinking about your book Roofwalker, which I’ve seen described as a novel by the publisher, a short story collection by some reviews, and a collection of fiction and nonfiction by a bookseller. When you sit down to write, are you thinking about what your writing is—nonfiction, fiction, essay, etc.—or does the storytelling guide you and the genre designation come later?

MONA SUSAN POWER:

When I’m sitting down to write I usually know the type of piece I’m writing, e.g., a novel, a short story, a CNF essay, etc… However, I’m not thinking beyond that most general idea of form. I understand that with fewer people reading books these days, even as more people are writing, marketers in the industry need strategies to find an audience for published work. So I don’t resist genre labels at that level, though I do when it comes to how my work is viewed or studied in a deeper way. Which is why I often mention in presentations that I don’t consider my work to be “magical realism.” We don’t have a proper category yet, that can accommodate those of us who are writing from a spiritual/cultural tradition outside the “accepted” spiritual beliefs of many in the mainstream, and outside what is considered “reality” in the Western model of thought.

Regarding Roofwalker, I very much appreciated my Milkweed publisher’s idea to organize the pieces as “Stories” and “Histories,” the fiction and non-fiction in conversation, echoing one another. (This was the marvelous Emilie Buchwald I worked with back in 2002.) The idea being that the reader could better understand how my lived experience serves as a foundation and inspiration for the leaps I take as a writer of fiction.