Wandering Stars: A Novel

“Kill the Indian, save the man.”

This quote, often used by Richard Henry Pratt, justified the forced assimilation of Indigenous people in the United States in the late 1800s. This quote first suggests that Christianity and militarization were tools to save men, while Indigenous people were not men but instead held a portion of identity that needed to be eradicated so they could be “saved.”

“Raging Waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

This is the quote that Jude Star says is already a part of him by the time he reads it, and which he names himself after. This quote refers back to the idea of wandering stars throughout the novel and is, of course, the narrative’s namesake. This quote offers a metaphor for the Indigenous American diaspora and the many characters who grapple with their identity as being the earth, or the cosmos, rather than being a part of or from it.

“I was still Bird, beneath all my names, beneath the names for everything I was there, home inside the bones of everything that ever resembled home to me, a core being and beating heart, the booming drum, a song belonging to no one.”

The realization that, despite the Sand Creek Massacre and forced assimilation and the tragedies he and other Indigenous people have endured, a piece of him remains, comes to Jude during a peyote ceremony. Many of the characters throughout the novel will experience a similar sensation, that there is a piece of themselves somewhere within them that is ever-changing and connected to something bigger—that the body becomes the vessel through which characters carry their histories, belongings, and homes while simultaneously being the thing that experiences disconnection through racism and violence.