50 pages • 1 hour read
Oscar HokeahCalling for a Blanket Dance
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Lena Stopp (1976)”
Lena recalls having told her daughter Turtle never to get involved with men who act like children. In spite of this advice, Turtle finds herself just such a man, and ends up chasing after Everardo, who is alcohol dependent and serially absent. The two have a child, Ever, and as the narrative begins Turtle, Everardo, and Ever are driving south from their home in Oklahoma to visit Everardo’s family, whom he has not seen in a decade, in Aldama, Chihuahua, Mexico. Lucia and Javier, Everardo’s parents, are overjoyed to see him, his wife, and their grandson. Turtle, Everardo, and Ever spend time with Everardo’s parents and meet several other members of the family before heading back to Oklahoma.
On the way, three Mexican police officers stop them. Turtle is immediately afraid, and the officers confirm her fears when they steal money from Everardo and ask if he is transporting anything illegal in the car. Although he explains that he is just trying to bring his family home, the officers search the vehicle and threaten to sell it and all of Everardo and Turtle’s belongings. When one of the officers tries to take Everardo’s boots, he lashes out, kicking the man in the knee. The three officers then viciously beat Everardo until Turtle bribes them with 1400 dollars, all the money that she has (her entire yearly tribal allotment). The officers then let the family go, but Everardo is beaten and bloody.
Once they are back in the United States, Turtle calls her mother Lena. At first, Lena does not realize the extent of the damage, and she chastises her daughter for allowing Ever to be present for an act of such brutal violence. She explains that such experiences harm children, even if they are too young to understand at the time what is happening. The two head to their hometown, Lawton. On the way, Turtle confesses that Everardo is urinating blood, and Turtle understands this to be a sign of kidney damage. Suddenly, Lena realizes how severe the beating must have been and worries that his injury will become a permanent disability. Turtle takes Everardo and Ever to her father Vincent’s house. Lena recalls how easy Vincent had been to fall in love with, but also how heartbreaking his alcohol addiction and lack of commitment to his family had been. Turtle sets up Everardo in her father’s bed, and when her father finally returns (an entire week later) she asks him if they can stay in his home until she has saved enough money for the down payment on a house. She has a new job and has convinced the bank to give her a loan.
Everardo’s brother Augustine shows up and is deeply saddened to see how badly his brother has been beaten. He had hoped that Everardo would be able to return to his job as an agricultural worker picking peanuts and cotton, but upon seeing Everardo’s condition he leaves and returns with an envelope of money for Turtle to put towards the house. He has given her $500. Turtle asks her mother for the remaining $1500 that she needs in order to secure the loan, but her mother responds that she will only provide Turtle with the money if Turtle agrees to move out of Lawton. The Cherokee Nation is building homes in Tahlequah. Turtle, however, does not want to leave Lawton and does not want to live near Cherokee people. She is half Kiowa, and she prefers Kiowa people to Cherokee people.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Vincent Geimausaddle (1981)”
Vincent is six days sober when Turtle shows up at his home, asking for money. He is happy to see her and his five-year-old grandson Ever and observes the boy’s spirited personality with pride. Turtle returns a few days later with Ever and her sister Lila. Lila has brought her own young son Quinton. They tell Vincent that Everardo has been hospitalized. He collapsed at work and Turtle had to drive him to the nearest hospital. They refused to admit Everardo because he did not have insurance, so Turtle took him to the hospital that treats only Indigenous patients. Although Everardo is Mexican, they agreed to see him. They told Turtle that he was dying. Because she will need to spend time at the hospital, she asks her father to pick up Ever and Quinton from school. Newly sober and up for the task, he agrees.
Vincent had also recently been hospitalized. He was told that he had cirrhosis of the liver and only one year to live. Although he considered ending his life with one last binge, he decided instead to sober up. He is happy with his choice now that the task of picking up his grandsons from school has fallen on him. After school, he takes the boys to the park and tries to teach them about their Kiowa ancestry. They have only heard from their mother that they are Cherokee, because their grandmother Lena had been. Vincent is Kiowa and wants them to learn about this part of their heritage also. He asks the boys if they have ever seen the Gourd Dance. They have no idea what that is and respond by telling him about the kids at school who wear parachute pants to break dance. Everardo is discharged from the hospital. Although he will live, he now has a permanent disability and has to get weekly dialysis treatments. He receives disability money, which Turtle uses to help pay the mortgage.
Vincent takes Ever and Quinton to a Gourd Dance. He explains to the boys that ceremonial clothing uses color, patterns, and fabric to denote tribal affiliation and teaches them the colors that signify Kiowa heritage. Vincent is honored for his past service in the Korean war. He teaches the boys the Gourd Dance, and after the event is over, he asks Turtle if she will help him to make ceremonial clothing for the boys. She gets fabric and sewing materials, and together the two make regalia using the patterns specific to their family and the colors that denote Kiowa heritage. Vincent reflects that Turtle has brought more than cloth: She has given him the opportunity to heal his grandsons.
Vincent begins to get sicker. Because of his deteriorating health, he forgets to pick the boys up at school. Turtle is sure that he is drinking again and stops bringing the boys to see him. Vincent becomes so despondent that he does consider consoling himself with alcohol, but instead he works hard every day to finish his grandsons’ regalia. When he has completed the ceremonial outfits, he calls Turtle to tell her the news. She thanks him and asks if he would like to begin to pick the boys up on Fridays and take them to dances. He happily agrees. Unfortunately, Victor’s condition worsens, and he dies alone in his home. He regrets his life choices and hopes that the regalia will help his grandsons to understand who they are and where they came from.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Hayes Shade (1986)”
Hayes sells Indigenous items at the Chero-Hawk Indian Store. Ever is looking at one of the masks he has for sale. Hayes is Lena’s nephew, but by Cherokee custom, Ever is considered his nephew. Because Lena had married a Kiowa man and moved away, Hayes hadn’t really known this part of his family well. He knows that Turtle works at a convenience store and lives in a trailer park with her husband Everardo, Ever, and his younger sister Yolanda, whom everyone calls Sissy. The family moves frequently. Ever, now 10, does not enjoy school, and hides in the woods rather than be forced to attend classes. He is an introverted child who does not enjoy the company of his classmates or the other children in their trailer park. A social worker visits the family because of Ever’s continued absence from school. She asks if his father touches him inappropriately, and Ever responds truthfully that he does not. She asks if Everardo hits his son, and Ever gets angry and tells her to leave. Although Turtle tries to explain that Everardo’s violence is the result of medication that he takes for his kidney injury, she and Ever are taken to a shelter for women experiencing domestic violence. Ever stops by his uncle Hayes’s store and the two spend time together. Hayes tells Ever about his childhood, regaling the boy with stories of how mean his siblings had been.
Turtle is able to leave the shelter and finds an apartment in a nearby, low-rent complex. She enrolls in a government funded job-training program and signs up to receive a home from the Cherokee Nation. There is a waiting list, but eventually they will be able to move back into their own home. She tells Ever that he has to go to school, but he refuses. Turtle gets Sissy off to school and then returns with the principal. A struggle ensues, and Ever runs away. He ends up at his uncle’s store, where Hayes gives him a Cherokee mask that he had been interested in. Hayes hopes that the item will help to heal his young nephew.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In these chapters, readers are introduced to protagonist Ever, his parents, and his grandparents. Hokeah begins to paint a portrait of the multi-cultural, inter-tribal nature of the part of Oklahoma in which the story is set, and in doing so, connects this text to his own family’s history. Generational Trauma and Resilience and Family Bonds begin to emerge as important themes, and Hokeah begins to use motifs such as violence and the Gourd Dance, powwows, and ceremonial regalia to illustrate the relationship between trauma, culture, and the healing process.
The novel begins with a multi-layered depiction of Generational Trauma: Matriarch Lena warns her daughter Turtle not to repeat the mistakes that she herself made in choosing a spouse, but having had no other role models, Turtle finds a husband whose propensity for violence, alcohol misuse, and absenteeism mirrors that of her own father Vincent, signaling how difficult it can be to break such generational patterns. Children learn relationship rubrics not because they are explained, but because they are modeled by their own parents, and Turtle is not able to make choices that differ substantially from those of her mother. In addition to its depiction of the way that fraught relationships tend to repeat in successive generations of families, this novel also depicts the way that violence weaves its way through multiple generations of the same family. The inciting incident, Ever’s father’s vicious beating at the hands of a trio of Mexican police officers, unleashes a chain of events that will impact not only Ever, but also his children. Ever is young when he witnesses his father’s beating, and as his grandmother Lena points out, children are not capable of understanding such traumatic events, nor do they have the emotional tools to process the feelings that rise to the surface after experiencing trauma at such a young age. Trauma impacts brain development, and traumatized children are likelier to have difficulties regulating emotion than typical children. Ever, in these early chapters, already manifests signs of impaired emotional regulation, and he has the added difficulty of growing up in a household where abuse is common. His father, unable to process his beating, becomes increasingly violent, directing his unresolved anger towards his wife and his children.
The novel takes place primarily in Lawton and Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Tahlequah is part of the Cherokee Nation, and Lawton is home to much of the Kiowa relatives of both Hokeah’s and character Ever’s families. Additionally, the character of Everardo (much like Hokeah’s father) is from Chihuahua, Mexico, and so there is also a trans-national element to the setting. This multi-cultural, inter-tribal space is complex, and in it various cultures, national traditions, and Indigenous nations come together and collide. Hokeah, who grew up in this part of Oklahoma, wants to depict the complexity of social relations in communities with diverse roots and members. Ever is neither wholly Cherokee nor wholly Kiowa, and although he is half Mexican, he does not speak Spanish and feels ill-at-ease with his father’s family. Several of the characters reflect on the longstanding tradition of inter-marriage between Mexican and Indigenous peoples, and that markedly borderlands history informs this novel’s politics of place and culture. That Ever’s family is victim to violence while crossing the border speaks to the real-life experiences of people with ties to communities on both sides of the US-Mexico border and roots this text in the history of the region.
Although the impact of trauma is already evident in this first set of chapters, so too is the text’s interest in Resilience and Family Bonds. The first evidence of resilience within Ever’s family is his grandmother Lena, who in spite of her own mistakes attempts (albeit unsuccessfully) to help her daughter find a healthy life partner. Lena understands the way that trauma takes root in children, and although she is unsuccessful in preventing her grandson from experiencing trauma, readers understand that there is strength and understanding in this family. Turtle’s quest for home ownership also emerges as an important indicator of resilience, and she does not stop working towards this goal until she achieves it. She is able to purchase her own him in these first chapters, and although she loses it and ends up first in a rented trailer and then in temporary housing for survivors of domestic violence, she does end up in her own Cherokee home, and in so doing becomes a model for her son Ever. He, too, will work towards home ownership and will be able to move into his own home on Cherokee nation land. That successful home ownership comes in part due to Indigenous national (tribal) affiliation is also an important nod to the role that cultural connection plays in individual success within this narrative: Ever is able to provide a good life for himself and his children in part because of the strength and resilience that he learns in his family, but also through the deep bonds forged by members of his Indigenous communities and the resources that Indigenous nations are able to allocate to their people.
The importance of traditional Indigenous culture is on further display in Vincent’s chapter. Although Vincent is only recently sober after a lifetime of active substance abuse, he finds the strength to help himself heal not only through reconnection with traditions like the Gourd Dance, but also through sharing those traditions with his family members. He teaches Ever and Quinton about Kiowa culture, helps Turtle sew a set of ceremonial regalia for the boys, and takes them to Gourd Dances and powwows. Because of Vincent, the boys learn that there are many strong and powerful traditions within their community, and they begin to understand the beautiful richness and complexity of their culture. Identity Development will become another key theme as the novel progresses. In this portion of the narrative, Vincent plants the seeds for an awareness of cultural identity that will help Ever manage his traumatic memories and post-traumatic stress, find an inner well of strength, and pass his cultural knowledge on to his own children.
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