Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat by Paula Gunn Allen

Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat Reviews

• 
  Sara-Jayne Poletti

  The author tells Pocahontas's story non-linearly and in a somewhat repetitive nature, which reflects Native traditions in storytelling. She also incorporates many different traditional Algonquin tales (and tales from other Native American tribes) that help to clarify the lens through which Pocahontas may have viewed the world. While the storytelling mode was sometimes hard to get into making it a bit of a time commitment (I think perhaps it might be served better in an oral setting), I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it. I walked away with a deeper understanding of Pocahontas and the world in which she lived/HER perspective vs the white, male European one (radical, I know), pluuuus it really makes me want to read more from and about Native peoples. Solid A- from me!
• 
  Charles Hancock

  Dr. Allen paints an amazing picture of the fabled woman. With every page, a surprise; making it a real page turner. As an American Indian, I gained a new understanding of her. The cadence of verse is truly poetic. This should be required reading! It's another for my 'favorites shelf'.
• 
  Sue

  My book club chose this book. Not one of us could finish it. The author seemed to circle back around to the many names Pocahontas wore through her life. But this was not even an interesting topic, those unfortunately were few. I wanted to love this book, but it felt more like banging your head against the wall.
• 
  K. Salter

  It remember a brief throwaway line about what happened in either Salem or Roanoke that was totally wrong. I'm writing this about 5 years after I read this book and the comment has still stuck with me. The book itself was a good read. Told in a beautiful way.
• 
  Lake Villa District Library

  [Re]INVEST in 2020: Re-invest in reading. In April, give memoirs and biographies a try. Find this book in our
  catalog!
• 
  Olivia Sonell

  Pocahontas by Paula Gunn Allen provides one of the most thought provoking biographies I've ever engaged with.
  
  More than just a narrative of the "Mother of Our Nation", Allen's book incorporates the Algonquin worldview into the very fabric of her writing. Using Native Oral Tradition as her guide Allen tells Pocahontas's story alongside parallel myths and stories from Algonquin lore.
  
  In addition to discussing how Pocahontas's life is reminiscent of Algonquin creation myths, she shows that Pocahontas was a spiritual adept - a medicine woman- and that her sojurns amongst the English and Johns Smith & Rolfe was part espionage for her people and the spirits of the land.
  
  Native science is discussed and we learn how their magical-scientific worldview provided a more holistic understanding of the universe, than the modern western rational-scientific one.
  
  This book has not only changed how I see Pocahontas, but how I see the world and all of its many parts.
• 
  Jo

  Paula Gunn Allen's thesis is that is impossible to assess Pocahontas's life without understanding the Algonquin world in which she lived. To this end, Allen takes the reader into the culture of the Powhatan people.
  
  I have mixed feelings about this biography. Although I respect Allen's approach to her subject, too many detours into supernatural realms and too much guesswork about Pocahontas's motivations for her actions threaten to derail the book.
• 
  Joan Porte

  Somewhere there has to be a good book about Pocahontas. This is not it
• 
  Megan Marvin

  This biography was hit or miss for me. I appreciated the insights into indigenous perspectives, but the writing was highly speculative and often got in the way. Some parts were oddly repetitive, while other parts skipped over vital information and presumed knowledge of later plots before they had been introduced. One highlight was the archetypal abduction narrative including Pocahontas, Sacagawea, and Malinalli.
  
  “Their mission was defined, ignited, and energized by those forces or powers that lie behind, beyond, and beneath the mundane. They did what they did because they were how they were, because that was what time it was, and because their personal characteristics, combined with their training, social conditioning, and the astronomical-quantum standing wave that was the time/space they moved in, made it so. These women were born to be agents of change.”
• 
  Dr. Kathy

  Suffice to say that anything you thought you knew about Pocahontas is probably a “faerie” tale. Paula Gunn Allen does a remarkable job of dreaming up possibilities to go along with the few realities we know about her short life, but we do learn from Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat that there is much more to know and learn than we thought possible. The author attempts to add humor and modern language to what at times is a very dry account, but still many parts of the book will stay with me as I continue to organize my new knowledge of Pocahontas.
• 
  Joan

  It's the first biography that I simply couldn't make it through. I understood the desire to provide context, but I think the author got into those details too frequently and ended up with something closer to a (very dry) textbook than an entertaining or informative encounter with the title personage. Even skimming through the unread balance of the book, it seemed more about her time, place, and cultures (hers and the English) than about the short life of the woman most of us know as Pocahontas.
• 
  Johanna Keim

  A bit hard to follow at times but I enjoyed reading about Pocahontas or Matoaka in context of the native oral tradition with a thorough reading of events through that lens.
• 
  Anne

  It was a struggle to stick with this one, and I read it as a book club assignment. Much repetition and detail, but not intriguing.
• 
  Renee

  Was a little tiring to keep reading. But I finished it for a book club.
• 
  Kathy Schmidt

  This book has good information, but the presentation was difficult for me to get through.
• 
  Hannah Milano

  Amazing book, very insightful and thought provoking. Well researched. Disney really did the reality of Pocahontas a disservice.
• 
  Allison Thurman

  Library
• 
  Mary

  Unlike any story you've been taught about her.