56 pages • 1 hour read
Annette Saunooke ClapsaddleEven As We Breathe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural-Historical Context: Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
Though most current scholarship considers it inappropriate to use the Western European title “Indian” to describe Indigenous Americans, the official name of the Indigenous nation to which Clapsaddle and the Cherokee characters in the narrative belong is the “Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.” The author is the first member of this nation to publish a novel. True to its background and themes, historical references and cultural asides saturate the narrative. Knowledge of the Cherokee people can aid readers in understanding the nuances and perceiving the ironies that are replete throughout the novel. For example, Cowney’s last name implies that he is a relative of Sequoyah, the scholar who created the Cherokee syllabary in 1821, making the Cherokees the first Indigenous nation with its own written language.
Facing occupation by the United States in the early 19th century, most bands of the Cherokees united under the leadership of Chief John Ross and fought with General Andrew Jackson to subdue the Muscogee Red Stick band. Subsequently, many of the 500 Cherokee volunteers participated with Jackson’s forces in the Battle of New Orleans. Despite their allegiance to him, two decades later Jackson ordered the Cherokees to assemble under the Indian Removal Act. As one of the Five Civilized Tribes, those detained traveled to proportionally small reservations in today’s eastern Oklahoma. The mountainous North Carolina terrain made it impossible for the US military to apprehend all Cherokee people. After more than 30 years of “illegally” occupying land that their ancestors lived on for thousands of years, the Eastern Band received official recognition by the federal government in 1868. The borders of their reservation, called the Qualla Boundary, became official in 1876. The US government granted citizenship to the Eastern Band at the time of their recognition, saying they had renounced citizenship in the Cherokee nation.
Clapsaddle makes several references to boarding schools attended by Cherokee youth, such as the Carlyle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Carlyle was the second and most prominent of the boarding schools that brought in Indigenous American young people from many nations. The commonly-stated goal of these schools was total Americanization of Indigenous young people. Administrators typically ran these schools on a military model and used corporal punishment against any student who resorted to Indigenous practices, such as speaking an Indigenous language or varying from prescribed appearance. Seen as models of excellence in educating Indigenous youth at the time, today such schools—in particular, Carlyle—serve as memorials to the young people who endured forced reeducation and the loss of traditional lifestyles.
Today, there are three bands of the Cherokee people, with an enrolled membership of more than 300,000 citizens. The United Keetoowah Band and the Cherokee Nation are both headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Eastern Band, with about 13,000 enrolled members, is the smallest. The Cherokee people have the largest enrolled citizenship of any Indigenous nation recognized by the US government.
Historical Context: Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina
Just as Clapsaddle’s references to Cherokee history and culture are quite nuanced, so is her description of North Carolina culture, the Asheville area, and the Grove Park Inn. Omni Hotels purchased the inn in 2013, exactly 100 years after it first opened. The inn boasts a number of American presidents—10—financial giants, and dignitaries who have stayed as guests. Most white North Carolinians with historical or cultural awareness considered the inn to be the finest resort hotel in the state and a complementary counterpoint to the nearby Biltmore mansion, the largest private dwelling in the US Cowney perceives the inn to be a garish mishmash of granite that attempts—and fails—to emulate the granite mountains that surround it. Clapsaddle’s historical depiction of the inn is accurate in that, after its use for internment of foreign diplomats, it became first a rehabilitation site for the US Navy for two years, followed by two years as a staging area for US Army soldiers returning from overseas duty.
The author’s familiarity with the eastern North Carolina setting allows her to make a number of subtle cultural observations. For instance, in describing Cowney and Essie first entering Asheville, Clapsaddle refers to North Carolina author Thomas Wolfe’s tomb, saying he is “home again at last” (35), ironically referring to Wolfe’s famous novels about Asheville, Look Homeward Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again. In that passage, she also describes the artistic community and, later in the book, the small college—a reference to Montreat, located in Black Mountain, 15 miles east of Asheville. Carolinians considered these locales somewhat unconventional at the time, though now the Black Mountain area is a center of retirement communities and religious retreats.
Clapsaddle also references certain other features of North Carolina life and culture. For instance, she describes Cowney drinking Cheerwine, a regional soft drink created in Salisbury, North Carolina, that is akin to cherry cola. Jon also gives Cowney a package of “Nabs,” a regional slang referring to peanut butter or cheese crackers made by the National Biscuit Company, today’s Nabisco. The author also makes many references to the rivers in the western North Carolina region. Plotting these and their confluences on a map assists in understanding the geographical features encountered by the novel’s characters.
