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Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle's first published novel, Even As We Breathe, which was released in the fall of 2020 by the University of Kentucky Press, is described by Publisher's Weekly as a "lush . . . addition to WWII and Native American literature [that] sings on every level" and has received similar praise from publications ranging from the Southern Literary Review to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.1 Clapsaddle emerges out of a long history of Cherokee literature that includes ancient and contemporary oral stories and writing in both English and the Cherokee syllabary since the early nineteenth century; however, Even As We Breathe is the first novel published by a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) of North Carolina. Other well-known Cherokee novelists such as Robert Conley, Brandon Hobson, and Daniel H. Wilson hail from the two federally recognized Cherokee tribes located in Oklahoma, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the Cherokee Nation.
In our recent video conversation, I asked Clapsaddle about the responsibility of being the first EBCI novelist, and she responded with her desire to help other writers in her community gain opportunities for publication. This concern for community also comes through in a National Public Radio segment, in which Clapsaddle, a teacher at Swain County High School, describes wanting to "write characters her students might know in real life." She reports that one of her former students, now studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, described to her the novelty of reading a book he "could identify with almost completely."2
Like her character Essie Stamper in Even As We Breathe, Clapsaddle left her Appalachian home to live in the northeast to attend Yale University. After earning her bachelor's, she went on to complete a master's degree in American Studies at the College of William and Mary before returning to the Qualla Boundary to work for the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, much like her novel's protagonist, Cowney Sequoyah, who goes away but "eventually [lands] back here in these mountains."3 These themes of attachment to land and relationship to place play a significant role in our interview, especially as we discuss what it means for a citizen of an Indigenous nation to identify as a North Carolina or Southern or...