Native author launches new memoir at Milkweed Books in Minneapolis
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When’s the last time you had a real, honest to goodness, no holds barred adventure?
Hopefully, the answer is something like yesterday, or at least pretty recently. And if the answer is “I honestly don't remember,” it might be time to start thinking about it — or it may be time to read “I Love You So Many: A Native Memoir of Adventure, Culture, and Family.”
Terria Smith’s new memoir is a tribute to living a full, adventurous life. She’ll be at Milkweed Books in Minneapolis for the book launch on Tuesday.
Smith is a tribal member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, and a proud Californian. She is the editor of news from Native California magazine and director of the Berkeley Roundhouse, Heyday Publishing's Indigenous storytelling program.
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Adventure is something Smith has always longed for. She grew up in a rural reservation community in the California desert and always dreamed of something more.
“When you’re in an environment like that, it does something to your ability to dream,” she said. “You keep thinking that everything is going on someplace else. So you always want to be someplace else.”
As a journalist, travel is now a big part of Smith's life, and she said traveling and having adventures is also a personal passion. Her travel-inspired memoir comes from her adventures in her ancestral homelands of Cuba, Iceland, Guyana and beyond.
She's hopeful, she said, to contribute to an emerging genre of travel books that focus on tribal and Native people.
“A lot of times Native people kind of get stuck with the idea that we're so sad, that we’re so tragic, you know, and all these other kind of ideas like that. That’s part of our history,” she said.
“There’s so much more to us than that. And I'm hoping that this book really shows a different dimension of tribal people and our interests. I hope that people come away. with that, thinking, oh, what a cool adventure, what a cool life.”
Smith said the title came from hearing a Spanish speaking couple use it.
“The title, it kind of symbolizes the people that I love, the places that I love, the experiences that I love. So it’s, I love you so many, so many places, so many people, so many things, so many experiences,” she said.
Smith said she took a memoir writing class, had a writing coach and put in a lot of work to write her book. But as hard as it was, she wrote the book with the idea of “fun” at the forefront of her mind.
“As fun as it is, you still have to go back to, you know, a lot of memories that maybe are unpleasant or painful, or sometimes they're not unpleasant and painful. Sometimes they’re happy memories ... but yeah, I did a lot of work. I’d really like to encourage people to share their stories,” she said.
Smith will share her memoir at Milkweed Books in Minneapolis with a book launch Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
