This book was super good. It was super original and I flew through it. It didn't feel like anything I've read in the past. Can't wait to read more from the author!! This book was unputdownable.

A Must Read for 2020! So many poignant topics: mental illness, racism, indigenous rights, poverty, and more. Add this to your TBR immediately!

In the style of memoir essay, award winning and bestselling Canadian author Alicia Elliott shares her riveting debut collection: “A Mind Spread Out On The Ground” (2020). Ms. Elliott has received acclaim for her voice in North American and Indigenous Literature, her articles and short stories have been featured in several notable publications including the Washington Post, she lives in Brantford, Ontario.

The Haudenosaunee indigenous Confederacy extends from a Syracuse N.Y. region into Aboriginal Ontario Canada. Ms. Elliott was raised in a large family by her Haudenosaunee father, often on the Six Nations Reservation. Elliott’s white devout Catholic mother, considered it as an advantage if her children passed for white. The family was impoverished and moved frequently, her mother’s mental illness didn’t help. When Elliott’s mother was well, she lavished her children with attention; meals were cooked, the laundry and household chores were completed. Elliot’s father didn’t hesitate to have her mother hospitalized when she became irrational, delusional, and paranoid. Her family lived in constant fear of coming under scrutiny of Social Services, which targeted indigenous people. It was unfortunate that her entire family was banned from their grandparent’s home, due to untreated head lice, which further traumatized her childhood.

Food insecurity is a known fact for poor and some indigenous families. American farmers receive government subsidies to grow wheat, corn, and soybeans that also contribute to vast corporate profiteering in the manufacture of high fructose corn syrup, hydrolyzed soy protein and refined carbohydrates. Cheap inexpensive foods flood the market that feed the poor throughout the U.S. and Canada found in the unethical fast-food and grocery industry. “Food Inc.” (2008) a documentary highlighted diet related conditions of obesity, diabetes and heart disease: Elliott recalled peanut butter and food bank cereal that sustained her family and how poor families self-medicate with sugar and junk food the way other people do with alcohol and drugs.

Elliott raised awareness of racial injustice against indigenous people, including an incident involving her own rape. All charges that she reported of violent criminal felony acts were dismissed. A Canadian indigenous mother of three, Cindy Gladue, was viciously murdered (2015). At the court trial she was further victimized and her family traumatized. The murderer was acquitted of all charges. Due to public outcry over so much racial injustice against people of color, leading to mass protests and social unrest across the U.S. and Canada, there remains a hope for change. ~ **With appreciation to Melville House Publishing via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a book of essays from Alicia Elliott, an award-winning Indigenous writer from the Onkwehonwe tribe. Born in the United States, Alician moved with her family to the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario when she was 13. With no running water.

Eventually her white “settler” mother (who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and was in and out of mental health facilities), would go on to have 8 children with her Haudenosaunee husband. Although Alicia and many of her siblings are “white-passing,” they experience intergenerational trauma all the same.

In each powerfully written narrative, Alicia shares very important (and very uncomfortable) subjects. Among them: colonization, interracial marriage, diaspora, mental illness, poverty, teenage pregnancy, trauma, food instability, disordered eating, sexual assault, systemic oppression, and much more.

In one of her shorter essays regarding boundaries, Alicia writes a thank-you/love letter to her husband (who is a white “settler”). In it, she talks of their interracial, “nation-to-nation” love:

“We untangle the threads of history and treat the wounds we find underneath. We listen to one another, support one another, resist our impulses to rewrite one another, to steer one another. We try to understand our distinct physical, emotional, spiritual and mental needs and meet them as best we can. Antiracism is a process. Decolonial love is a process. Our love is a process. I never want it to end."

Additionally, in her essay on food instability, she shines a light on the intergenerational blame Native Americans receive, despite being colonized by the very white folks who displaced them:

“The ways Indigenous peoples deal with our trauma, whether with alcohol or violence or Chips Ahoy! Cookies, get pathologized under colonialism. Instead of looking at the horrors Canada has inflicted upon us and linking them to our current health issues, Canada has chosen to blame our biology, as those very genes they’re blaming weren’t marked by genocide, too. This is how a once thriving, healthy population comes to be “inherently unhealthy.” It wasn’t the genocide that centuries of Canadian officials enacted upon us that was the problem; it was how we reacted to the genocide. It was our fault, our bodies’ fault.”

These candid, vulnerable essays should be required reading for anyone who has grown up in North America. Especially for those of us who never understood how deeply colonization has affected those who first inhabited "Turtle Island."


Special thanks to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, do I ever live in a Canadian bubble, well just a bubble in general. I am just now reaching out of that bubble to learn more about the world around me by reading more non-fiction. Well, Canadian Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott has opened my eyes to a few subject matters with her powerful, thoughtful, honest and moving collection of essays.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is my first experience reading a collection of essays from an author, and I had no idea how much I would find essays as interesting, insightful and enjoyable as I did theses. Alicia Elliott covers a bit of ground here with the subject matter she explores. I usually would find that a bit overwhelming, but I enjoyed the format with a single subject matter per essay. I took my time reading and stopped to think about each essay and take notes along the way. I thought Alicia Elliott gave her personal opinion and argument well with thoughtful insight, depth, wit and heart. Her brilliant use of metaphors adds some understanding and depth to her thoughts on the subject matters. She draws on her own experiences as she explores colonialism, racism, mental health, abuse, sexual assault, poverty, malnutrition, capitalism parenthood and writing. There is a recurring theme of colonialism throughout it that is brilliantly weaved in through them. The essays flowed smoothly and connected well into each one.

Alicia Elliott's voice is gentle, informative and understanding with her frustration and anger. Her words are deeply moving, and it was easy to pick up on the mood of each essay and her attitude towards each subject matter. She is boldly honest with her truths and her insight about each subject and she gave me a bit to think about with each essay. She shares a part of herself with us while sharing her thoughts on each subject matter. Her writing is inviting to form our own thoughts, and she invites us to challenge our assumptions. At times I did want to argue with her in my head with some of my assumptions; however, I reminded myself these are her experiences, her opinions, thoughts and arguments, not mine. So I silenced that noise in my head and listened to what she had to say. I am so glad I did. I highly recommend it.

Alicia Elliott recounts her experiences as a mixed-race Indigenous woman living in both Canada and the United States in a series of personal essays. She seamlessly sets her family's struggles with poverty and mental health against the backdrop of cultural history, colonialism and cultural genocide.

This book was well-written and cohesive, but I did not enjoy it. It took the form of long form semi-autobiographical essays which I found tedious to complete. Every essay seemed to drag on for pages more than was necessary to get the story and the point across. This would be a great read for those who enjoy long form essays, but it just didn't grab me.

"A Mind Spread Out on the Ground" is a superb work by Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott about the legacy of trauma, racism, mental illness, poor health outcomes, colonization, poverty, and abuse facing Native Americans. This book center's around Elliott's experiences growing up with a mentally ill Christian mother and a Native American father, and how both the United States and Canada have either killed or punished Native Americans for existing. The book is split into a series of essays, and Elliott beautifully interweaves bits of history, philosophy, and literature into them to elaborate on her points and experiences. I could not recommend this book more and will certainly be looking for others works by this author.

An interesting book about the Native Americans and the challenges in this story about race, and other difficulties that this culture face. It was an interesting book.

I started reading this recently and it’s pretty good! I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds and if it’s higher than three stars, I’ll review it on my blog!

"A Mind Spread Out on the Ground" is a book of memoir-like essays that are infused with the author's thinking on a multitude of subjects. While tracing events of colonialism and the abuse of Native peoples, Elliott also traces the story of her own life as a half-white, half Mohawk child who grew up sometimes on the reservation and sometimes not. That, coupled with the trauma of her mother's mental illness, extreme poverty and her father's alternating between fierce love and abuse of his family, Elliott narrates not only the story of her life, but analyzes racism, classism, colonialism and sexism. She is a powerful essayist who draws the reader into the book by asking provocative questions and pointing out reality through the eyes of Indigenous people. The book is fascinating because not only does the reader come to know the author, but is forced to think about constructs that they may have avoided. The last essay, especially, is compelling, as Elliott calls for reader participation.

This is the type of book to read a second time, because there is so much there that one time through is not enough to absorb it. I highly recommend this book!

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground.

Oh my goodness, this was SUCH a powerful and informative read. Alicia Elliott, raised in Canada by a Native North American father, and white mother, dives head first into mental illness, drug use, religion, colonialism, abuse, the complexities of relationships and more. Her writing is so precise, and her message is so strong, I got A LOT out of this book, it honestly gave me goosebumps.

This book was a powerful examination of the intersection between mental illness, especially depression, and minority viewpoints, especially those of minority populations. Its discussions on how the societal situation of Native Americans affects their mental health. An exceptional book with an important viewpoint; strongly recommended.

Thanks Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book. Overall, I enjoyed the book but I’m not a fan of the formatting of it. I appreciate all of the education provided on Native American relations here in North America but I didn’t like how the book switched back and forth between that and actual story. I think I was expecting a memoir and this ended up being a series of short essays. I do appreciate the discussion around what it means to be white-passing Indian/Indigenous American while growing up in lower income areas with a mother who had debilitating mental illness.

Yes! Yes! And, more yes! This essay collection by an indigenous author is impactful and lyrical. Covering so many issues in clever and narrative ways. I loved so many of these that it’s difficult to cite a few favorites, but I loved the form of the final essay about domestic abuse and her Susan Sontag essay dealing with photography, videography and the evidence and truth or falsehood it provides was mind blowing. But, every single essay carried so much weight. A consistently brilliant collection.

"A Mind Spread out on the Ground" is a complicated, difficult, wise, and beautiful collection of essays that weaves through the personal and the communal wounds wrought by colonialism, racism, economic precarity, and misogyny. Elliott writes eloquently about her personal experiences in service of inviting the reader to stand as witness to her pain, love, and her messy process of decolonizing her mind and her loves. Throughout the collection, this role of witness deepens and becomes more personal. The final essay, "Extraction Mentalities," is what she calls a "participatory essay." It's a long meditation on love and pain in our closest relationships, but it's structured as a questionnaire. The reader is no longer witness of another's life. Instead, they testify to the truth of their own complicated loves.
This essay collection is hard to read. It tackles painful subjects with exquisite, precise prose. But underlying it all is a deep sense that we are in this life together. Our paths intersect, and how we treat each other affects the whole community for good or ill.

This is a great collection of essays that I found myself immersed in. These were beautifully written and cover a wide range of topics and expertly tying together the past and present in her writing.

This is truly one of the best essay collections I've read in years. The writer is extremely talented, making the prose feel fresh and enjoyable to read. More importantly, the collection succeeds in using the writer's personal experiences to speak to larger-scale issues; poverty, food insecurity, colonialism, sexual violence, mental health, and more. The book is cohesive, smart, and carries a great deal of ground without feeling uneven. I really recommend this book to anyone who wants/needs to learn more about the long-term effects of colonialism, but really, everyone should read it.