Tellin' It Like It Is: Selected Works of Adrian C. Louis

Tellin’ It Like It Is offers a powerful introduction to Adrian C. Louis (1946–2018), one of the most unflinching Native American literary voices of the twentieth century. Drawing from a half-century of published writing—and including a few previously unpublished pieces—this collection captures the evolution of Louis’s voice, worldview, and craft.

Editor David Pichaske, a close friend of Louis in his later years, curates this volume with deep insight into both the public figure and the private man. Selections are arranged chronologically to trace Louis’s transformation from a Nevada reservation teenager to a California hippie, a sixties hitchhiker, a Boston academic, a South Dakota reservation journalist, and finally, a Midwestern college professor.

Louis’s work immerses readers in reservation life, yet its critique reaches the broadest dimensions of American and human experience. To enrich understanding, the book includes literary reviews, scholarly essays (including one by a noted Polish critic), an interview with Louis, and his own reflections on literature and identity. A foreword by poet Bojan Louis provides further context for this essential collection.