Recommended! Roy Boney's "Tell It in Your Own Way" in WE RISE, WE RESIST, WE RAISE OUR VOICES

When you read through We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson, you're probably going to do a double take when you get to this image:

It is by Roy Boney. He's Cherokee. His essay, "Tell It In Your Own Way" is one of the many splendid items in this terrific volume:

Roy Boney is one of the coolest people on the planet. I've written about his work before. He's done some excellent work in the Code Talker series, published by Native Realities. And--kidlit folks--if you're organizing a conference, invite him to sit on panels! I was blown away by the panel that he, Arigon Starr, and Lee Francis did at Returning the Gift last year.

In his essay for We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, he writes that he's a full blooded Cherokee and grew up hearing Cherokee spoken aloud. In school, people noticed that he liked to draw and thought he should draw Native people like the ones in westerns, but he didn't like that because (p. 60):

...those types of images didn't express what my life was like. My family never ran around in buckskins, and we never lived in tipis. We drove cars, lived in houses, and watched TV like everybody else. And we laughed a lot! If I was going to make art, it would be art that I enjoyed and that expressed my experience as a Cherokee person living in the modern era.

I love reading that, and think Native kids who read his essay will rise, too, to resist mainstream expectations of who we are, what we look like, what we should do...

Here, again, is the illustration Roy Boney did, to go with his essay:

About that illustration, he says:

The actual piece is called Simpquoyah, and it is a cartoonized version of Sequoyah based on a popular television illustration style. [...] The caption in the drawing is written in Cherokee and translates as "Do you understand Cherokee?" The background is made up of the Cherokee syllabary as originally designed by Sequoyah himself! In the corner is my signature written in Cherokee. This is one of my favorites pieces because it combines several loves of mine: the Cherokee language, humor, cartoons, and digital illustration.

I highly recommend We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson. Published in 2018 by Crown Books for Young Readers, it is easy to see why it is getting starred reviews from mainstream reviewers.

Roy Boney's WE SPEAK IN SECRET

Roy Boney's We Speak in Secret is one of many stories that will be in Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers: Volume 1, to be published by the Indigenous Narratives Collective (INC Comics). Boney's story was released in November and is available for $1.99. Here's the first page. The symbols at top are in the Cherokee syllabery, developed by Sequoyah. Development of that syllabery is included in We Speak in Secret: 

Some months back, I recommended Arigon Starr's comic about the Choctaw Code Talkers. Both Starr and Boney tell us a lot about the servicemen Americans know as the Code Talkers. Hopefully, readers of AICL have seen recent media coverage of code talkers.

In their respective comics, Starr and Boney, tell us who the code talkers were, as young people in the wars in which they served.

The first page of Boney's story tells us a lot about his character. His name, written using the Cherokee syllabary is ᎠᏟᏐᎢ.* Mr. Boney told me it is pronounced ah-thlee-so-ee. ᎠᏟᏐᎢ thinks about his childhood, playing with his friends. He wants to soak his feet in the creek where he caught crawdads. He tells us his name in Cherokee, and that it means "I habitually run."  Some fellow soldiers call him Runabout Smoke. He talks about stereotypes and how they shape the way some soldiers interact with him. One calls him "chief" and tells him that they won't be using "smoke signals" on the battlefield. For the most part, they call him Runny. He isn't keen on that name either, but in the midst of a war, he let such things slide off his back in order to stay alive. In his group is a Cherokee from North Carolina who is going by the name of Moses Mouse. He, too, speaks Cherokee.

Boney uses a sepia tone on some pages, to show us his character's childhood. On one, he's a six-year-old in Indian Territory, listening to his dad and uncle talk about how their mother, a full blood Cherokee, was declared incompetent, thereby making it possible for land grabs to take place. These land grabs were part of the US government efforts to dissolve Native Nations through the Dawes Act. His uncle says "Allotment. Fancy word for stealin'."

The heart of We Speak in Secret is about how the Cherokee language came to be used for transmissions. The Germans were intercepting communications and able to figure out where to direct their bombs. At one point, Runny's group is hit pretty hard. He looks for Moses, calling to him in Cherokee. Moses responds, also in Cherokee. Dauber, their sergeant, is already digging Moses out of the debris and hears the two men speaking in Cherokee to each other. Of course, he doesn't understand them. The two Cherokee men realize that they can use Cherokee for transmissions. Thereafter, "Using our language proved to be a winning strategy. We confounded the enemy."

Boney's story concludes by telling readers that "U.S. Public Law 110-420 states that the Code Talkers, first reported in use October 17, 1918, deserve immediate recognition for their dedication and valor." On November 30, 2013, the U.S. Congress honored Code Talkers with the Congressional Gold Medal. The Cherokee Phoenix (the Cherokee Nation's newspaper) has an article about it that includes an image of the medal the Cherokee Nation made, in collaboration with the US Mint. It, too, uses the Cherokee syllabary.

In twelve short pages, Boney conveys a lot of history. I enjoyed every word, and highly recommend his story. A curator at the Heard Museum Library purchased and printed it right away. He, too, found it exceptional. He catalogued it and put it on World Cat.

If We Speak in Secret is an indicator of what we'll see in Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers: Volume I, we're all in for a magnificent treat.

A bit more info about Roy Boney. He's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He does terrific work, much of it described on his website.

Order and download your copy today from the INC website.

*Post updated to include the character's name, written using the Cherokee syllabary, and the way it is pronounced.