Shell Shaker is a novel by LeAnne Howe, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The novel's plot revolves around two tales of murder involving Choctawpolitical leaders. Set over a 200-year period, it focuses on several generations of the Billy family who try to keep the peace. According to Howe, Shell Shaker is "a book about power, its misuse, and how a community responds. It's not for Indians only."
Title
A shell shaker is a woman who participates in a Choctaw ceremony during which empty turtle shells are tied around a dancer's feet. The dance is a prayer to the spirits to answer a request. The Billy family is descended from the first shell shaker, Grandmother of Birds.
Plot
Shell Shaker links two distant generations of the Billy family. The novel begins in 1738 in Choctaw Mississippi, initially focusing on Red Shoes. When Red Shoes' wife is murdered, his Choctaw wife Anoleta is blamed. Anoleta's mother, Shakbatina, sacrifices her life to save her daughter and avert a war between the tribes. Anoleta and her family try to move on as their tribe spends the next decade deciding on action to take against Red Shoes, who plays both sides in what becomes a war which devastates the town of Yanàbi and Anoleta's family. Shakbatina's descendants live in Durant, Oklahoma in 1991. As fire destroys the land around them, the Choctaw chief Redford McAlester is murdered and assistant chief Auda Billy is blamed. Susan Billy, her mother, confesses the murder and Isaac Billy gathers their scattered family to help with the investigation. Plot threads include embezzlement, rape, money laundering and contributions to the Irish Republican Army and the Mafia, with a spiritual facet when an old woman claims to be Sarah Bernhardt.
Themes
The novel explores a number of themes, particularly themes regarding the circular nature of time and issues of Native American identity. With regard to time, the novel presents time as circular, and incapable of being divided into the past and the present. Connections over time are explored, including in the concept of a shilombish that is troubled in life, and casts a shadow that remains on a family until the problem is solved. Howe also explores themes related to Choctaw traditions and legends. The novel uses the traditional Choctaw burial practices to show the connection between the body and the land. In speaking about the novel, Howe has explained that, "Native stories... seem to pull all the elements together of the storyteller's tribe, meaning the people, the land, and multiple characters and all their manifestations and revelations, and connect these in past, present and future milieus." The novel also explores issues of identity. Howe has been praised for presenting the Billy sisters as "real" Indian women, who exercise autonomy in their careers, rather than marginalized figures or romanticized Indian princesses. Other themes explored in the work are the power of words, which become real if spoken, and the Americanization of the Choctaw tribe.
Motifs and images
The novel has a number of motifs and images, with both murders occurring during the autumnal equinox. Burial rituals connect the novel's two time periods. Smoke is a screen between eras, becoming thicker as the stories begin to meet. Birds appear throughout the novel, which tells the story of the Grandmother of Birds.
Reception
Shell Shaker has been praised for emphasizing the importance of history in the lives of a Native American group as they deal with decolonization. Taos Pueblo scholar and critic P. Jane Hafen said in 2002, "Howe seamlessly integrates a history of desperate and gruesome fights for survival with modern Faustian pacts with materialism and wealth. At the heart of the story are generations of Choctaw peoples who preserve with ritual gestures of 'life everlasting. It is one of the few novels to focus on Choctaw history from the point of view of a native author. According to Ken McCullough, "Although there has been significant scholarship on this historical period in the southeast, between the arrival of De Soto and Removal, no one has written a work of the imagination set in this period". The novel presents its characters differently from preconceived American ideas: "The variations in voice among the protagonists show that Howe knows how to imagine different characters, and those figures confirm and challenge stereotypes about Native Americans in a way that can only be productive for all readers."
Style and technique
The novel begins from the point of view of Shakbatina, who describes her death. Except for two later chapters, the remainder is third-person narration. This viewpoint change is part of traditional Choctaw storytelling, giving voices to its characters rather than describing them. Repetition is used throughout Shell Shaker in situations and quotations to connect the generations. One example is "ten thousand feet of intestines hanging from trees in Yanabi Town", which is finally explained at the end of the novel. Articles such as a porcupine sash and turtle shells pass down, along with their imagery, from generation to generation. The repetition of images, connecting the generations, enforces the themes of circular time and the connection of people. Memories and flashbacks are used, becoming longer and more frequent as the Billy family attempts to piece together its past. According to writer Lucy Maddox, memory in the novel "alternates scenes from present and the past, conflating ancestral lives and contemporary ones to produce stories about the ways in which identity is both constructed and understood in a tribal context that makes memory more relevant than chronology". The translated Choctaw language is featured, beginning with Shell Shaker opening lines. The novel's main themes are illustrated in Choctaw, including the bloodsucker and the search for the Greatest Giver. Grandmother Porcupine, a trickster, provides humor as she imparts knowledge to those she chooses. Claiming to be an animal spirit over 400 years old and a protector of the family, she represents "an openness to life's multiplicity and paradoxes".
Criticism
Shell Shaker has been praised for its dynamic presentation of characters, without resorting to stereotypes of either whites or Native Americans. While it is true that whites in the sections set in the 18th century, often referred to as either "inklish okla," English people, or "filanchi okla," French people, are often portrayed as the enemy, this reflects the historical record. In the sections set in the present day, however, there are sympathetic and well rounded white characters, such as Borden, the only British character, married to a Native American woman. Italian mobsters and Irish gangsters are stereotypical, but Howe also acknowledges that "corruption necessarily a condition of Americans and American society overall, and if it is, then American Indians are participants, not exempt". The novel contains sex and violence, with scenes of rape, war and cannibalism which may be difficult for some readers.
