Luis Alberto Urrea, in his keynote lecture for The Big Read last fall, recommended in an offhand way Frank X. Walker as an author and Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York as a book that had been influential for him. Never one to turn down a recommendation, I whipped out my phone and used Suggest an Item to place a hold (the WPL didn't own it at the time) right there in the auditorium while Urrea was still talking.

Buffalo Dance is the fictionalized experience of York, William Clark's slave, told through Frank X. Walker's poetry of what the journey might have been like for the slave accompanying the Lewis and Clark expedition. York's experience must be fictionalized because he, though present, has been objectified by history as nothing more than a pack mule. Buffalo Dance has the feeling that York is talking to himself more than to us. He seems to be telling himself his own stories because no one else has asked to hear them. But those stories are well worth listening to and have the potential to make traditional understandings of this bit of history a little bit broader. I wish I was teaching a high school history or English class so I could include this in the curriculum.

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