Start with 10,200 books,one big pink truck, five days in April, and six locations spread out across the “book desert” of the Navajo Nation. Add a covey of young Native creatives and mix in the special magic of giving back, and the result is an epic journey—Book Drop 2024—that delivered free books (and shoes, socks, stickers, zines, and bracelets) to Hopi and Navajo youth and their families.
Readers gather near the Big Pink Truck, also known as “Pinky the Rezmobile,” at the Hopi Public Library during Book Drop 2024. (Credit: Wade Adakai)
“Physical books are not the most accessible things on the reservation,” says Amber McCrary, one of the project’s volunteers. McCrary, who heads the Indigenous publisher Abalone Mountain Press, knows this from experience, having grown up in Tuba City on the reservation. “When you are living on the rez and income is limited, your family is going to choose money for food over money for books.”
Book Drop 2024 was led by NDN Girls Book Club, a nonprofit founded in 2023 by Kinsale Drake, a member of the Navajo Nation, with a mission “to make accessibility to quality Indigenous literature a reality for all ages by sending out free books and literary care packages.” The organization also hosts free youth workshops and author talks while uplifting Indigenous literature and supporting Indigenous booksellers.
Underscoring the emphasis on young people, Drake says, “If our youth do choose to pursue writing and higher education, they deserve mentors, adequate and culturally competent resources, and the tools that will help them undertake that journey and achieve their dreams.” To that end, the organization has been offering at least one free workshop each month via Zoom and as many in-person events as the small team can manage.
Drake, who graduated from Yale University in 2022 with a degree in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration as well as in English, and her close friend Lily Painter, who is pursuing a degree in American Indian/Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, have poured their energy into hosting events since NDN Girls Book Club was launched. Looking back over the short life of the organization, Drake says, “We’ve done in-person events on reservations, in urban areas, with student groups, universities, libraries, book festivals, and pop-ups in various cities with partner organizations like Indigenous Women Rising and Abalone Mountain Press.”
As a result of this visible work in the community, Drake was enlisted for the book drop by Cellular One’s SBi Giving Foundation, which does various kinds of charitable work with the Navajo Nation. Fellow Diné Amy Denet Deal, who heads 4KINSHIP and its philanthropic arm, 4KINSHIP Indigenous Futures Fund, was another lead partner. Once NDN Girls Book Club jumped in, Drake says she recruited McCrary, who, along with Painter, Deal, and others, helped with months of logistics.
“January through March was just a flurry of making estimates,” says Drake. “Guessing how much we’d need, learning what a pallet of books was, figuring out who was reading or participating at which stop…. It was an insane learning curve for all of us. Together we dreamed up stops at accessible sites that would highlight the resources that already existed in those parts of the reservation.”
Ultimately the book drop completed a circle tour of the reservation, stopping at six sites: Window Rock at the Navajo Nation Library and Museum; the Chapter House in Leupp; the library in Kykotsmovi on the Hopi Reservation (which is located inside the borders of the Navajo Nation); Change Labs in Tuba City; Monument Valley (close to Kinsale’s family’s place of origin); and Shiprock, at the Diné College Library.
Help came from many community organizations. Morningstar Minerals provided a warehouse. Chizh for Cheii (Firewood for Grandpa) provided a truck and showed up at several of the stops to provide music and hand out toys, shoes, socks, and other needed items. And multiple national presses donated books—Copper Canyon Press, Milkweed Editions, Torrey House Press, Macmillan, Greystone Books, and others. The independent children’s press Levine Querido alone provided half of the goal of ten thousand books, including titles by popular Indigenous authors such as Darcie Little Badger, Eric Gansworth, and Andrea L. Rogers. Salina Bookshelf provided books specifically for Navajo readers, including Running With Changing Woman by Lorinda Martinez and the bilingual The Three Little Sheep/Dibé Yázhí Táa’go Baa Hane’ by Seraphine G. Yazzie, translated by Peter A. Thomas.
Throughout the planning, NDN Girls Book Club thought carefully about centering Indigenous youth. Perhaps the most visible symbol of that care and the most emblematic image on social media during the historic event was the Big Pink Truck, also lovingly referred to as “Pinky the Rezmobile.” The product of Painter’s imagination, the truck boasts all the sponsor’s names and logos as well as the book drop logo. The colorful image used on all Book Drop 2024 PR and associated goodies was created for the tour by Diné designer Lynne Hardy. In it a Diné girl sits under a rainbow, corn plants behind her, while she reads. More books, Diné cultural items, and the words Yiłta! Book Drop surround her. Yiłta! means “I read it!” in Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language. Using the Diné language and highlighting community members was high on the priority list of the project planners for the book drop.
Events during the five-day tour included readings by young Indigenous writers such as Erik Bitsui, Tyler Mitchell, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Amanda Tachine. Local markets featured art and craft vendors, coffee, and wares from Abalone Mountain Press. At the Leupp event, Kinsale’s mother and aunties came and helped make fry bread for those in attendance; at Change Labs in Tuba City, a friend and local teacher, Jonessa Reid, brought her students to perform traditional dances.
For Drake the entire undertaking was linked to traditional Navajo teachings in other ways. “At the beginning of the journey, on the very first morning, before we did any of our events, we were blessed in a hooghan for our journey by Shawn Attakai, a medicine man. He made sure we were protected…. He was very proud of us and very diligent in blessing us with specific songs and prayers.”
Drake, who is embarking on a new chapter of her life as a graduate student in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, hopes that with the help of Painter, McCrary, and others, NDN Girls Book Club will be able to continue its important work. “We’re really hopeful that we can continue book drops in the future and mobilize our communities to make it happen; there has been quite some buzz since the first one.”
Drake also believes that NDN Girls Book Club is carrying a family legacy into a new era. “People [in attendance at Book Drop 2024] who knew my grandparents and my maternal family would tell me I was making my cheii [grandpa] proud, that I was continuing the work that he was doing for our people before he passed. That meant everything to me. My grandfather is my biggest inspiration; I’m always trying to make Navajo Mountain proud and represent us well.”
Those five days in April when ten thousand books were put into the hands of almost two thousand Native youth may indeed be an important step in transforming a book desert into a nourishing literary space.
Kimberly Blaeser is the founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and the author of six poetry collections, most recently Ancient Light. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, and an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.
