‘Raising Bean’ raises consciousness about Indigenous people

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W.S. Penn’s new book, “Raising Bean,” is a written testament to Native American storytelling. Penn wrote the collection of essays for his granddaughter Bean (Clare) in the form of conversations as a guide to Native perspectives on life.  

Penn dubbed his granddaughter “Bean,” who is 7, while she was still in the womb. “Using the nickname Bean became a habit when my daughter was pregnant, and the little thing was growing inside her,” he said. 

In the book’s first essay, “In the Nick of Names,” Penn explores not only the history of nicknames but their importance in culture, family life and friendships. 

He writes: “Names have power. They describe for the rest of the world either a relationship to family or an expectation. Accidental or not, kids — often-with uncanny, innate and unarticulated purpose — grow up to inhabit their names to become the meaning their names have given them for all sorts of their available lives.” 

In his essays, Penn draws heavily on the oral tradition of his Nez Perce tribal customs, where stories were passed down from his grandfather, who ran away at age 13 from an Oklahoma Indian boarding school that later became Haskell Indian School. Official school records say he deserted. Penn was raised in the 1950s in a housing project near the LaBrea Tar Pits in Lo Angeles, a far cry from how Native Americans were portrayed with traditional headdresses. “I chose the book’s subtitle, ‘Essays on Laughing and Living,’ because I didn’t want to sound like a lecture. I wanted Clara Bean to find something she could laugh about.” 

“Life has a lot of humor. I wasn’t supposed to live at birth, but I’m still here, and that’s pretty funny to me,” he said. 

Penn’s road to Michigan State University, where he taught in the English Department until he retired, was circuitous. He was living in New York when he attended the famous Yaddo writers and artists program there and met a man who was teaching at MSU. Penn joined the faculty there in 1987 on a tenure track. “I had a wonderful experience at MSU,” he said. 

The oral tradition of Native Americans is important to Penn. He points to his grandfather as helping carry on that tradition “where facts don’t matter as much as how facts are told.”  

“Our family liked to say my grandfather deserted from the Indian School, and we never knew what day he was born, so we created one: Thanksgiving,” Penn said. Penn’s granddaughter Bean has even anointed him with a nickname: “Bumpa,” after he bumped his head on some furniture. 

“I like to think I have a strong background in the oral tradition of storytelling,” he said. It’s clear that is the case, and in his essay, “Gratitude,” he retells the traditional story of the Coyote and Prairie Dogs to Bean. The coyote-dog story, in essence, is about commercialism, jealousy and how it backfires on the prairie dogs. 

In “Gratitude,” Penn helps define storytelling and how it is refined and changed over time. He writes how Bean asks him to tell a story over and over: “She wants to hear how the story will change details and events because the stories aren’t memorized and told only one way … and stories told over and over become legends until they are so ingrained in a community’s soul that they become myths that tells us how a community is.” 

In his life and career, Penn says, he was cautious not to become what he calls “a professional Indian,” and he retells that story in the essay “A Harvest Moon,” which details an Indian’s visit to his granddaughter’s classroom. In that essay, he informs his granddaughter about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in how Native American, Indian and Indigenous are used interchangeably and decisions are made about how they should be used. 

As he walks in for the school show, Penn brings a beaded handbag, a Kachina, a Hopi pot and a Navaho marriage pot to illustrate his talk and, as is the case, the stories a phantasmagoric. As he ends, a student says, “That’s a stupid story, and that’s not true.” In a fictional recasting of the event, he replies to the student, “It won’t ever be for you.” 

Even though Penn says that “I’m too old to write another book,” he’s started on a young adult novel. “It’s hard keeping the language aimed at 10 to 14-year-olds,” he said. 

In his career at Michigan State University, Penn won the distinguished Faculty Award and authored several books, including “All My Sins are Relatives” and “Feathering Custer.” 

All of Penn’s books are witty, acerbic and filled with modern-day absurdities told by an author who stands in two worlds. Bean, who has not read the books yet, will soon be old enough to begin, and that’s when the fun will begin. 

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