Carnival Lights

Cover Page

Praise for Chris Stark’s Carnival Lights

“Chris Stark is a masterful storyteller, and Carnival Lights is an unforgettable novel. Fluid in time and place, flowing between one past and another, offering a heartbreaking portrait of multigenerational trauma in the lives of one Ojibwe family, this tapestry of stories is beautifully woven and gut-wrenching in its effect. Carnival Lights is an important book about the treachery and tragedy that so many Native Americans in this country have experienced, particularly women. Read it, and it may change you forever.”

William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author

“By weaving narratives back and forth through space and time, Chris Stark’s newest novel explores the evolution of violence experienced by Native women and girls at the hands of non-Native men – dating back centuries. Simultaneously graphic and gentle, Carnival Lights takes the reader on a daunting journey through generations of trauma, crafting characters that are both vulnerable and resilient.”

Sarah Deer, (Mvskoke), Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas, MacArthur Genius Award recipient

“Carnival Lights is a heartbreaking wonder of gorgeous prose and urgent story. It propels the reader at a breathless pace as history crashes down on the readers as much as the book’s vivid characters. A stunning novel honoring murdered and stolen indigenous girls whose stories are too often dismissed. The author’s brilliant heart restores their dignity and via the realm of imagination, brings them home.”

Mona Susan Power, The Grass Dancer, Standing Rock Sioux

“It’s not every day that one is given an inimitable gift of truth. Carnival Lights is that gift. The history books that we’ve all read throughout time were purposely devoid of the realities of decades of Native g******e, attempts to eradicate our culture, and the horrendous effects of the boarding school era—trauma that continues to permeate the American Indian communities today. Carnival Lights is an opportune story of how two young girls navigate these lived experiences and provides a veracity that will reach deep into your heart, creating a new found reflection of the actualities of this historical trauma. Chris Stark, a skilled narrative artist, once again engenders storytelling that ingeniously weaves multi-generational authenticities for not only the Native communities, but also as reflected for so many others. It’s time for all of us to embrace this gift of truth.”

Deb Foster, Anishinaabe, MS-MFT Executive Director for the Ain Dah Yung Center, a meeting place for American Indian homeless youth and families

“There are so many moods and story currents running through this wonder of a novel that I can attribute to individual women whose lives experiences run parallel to Stark’s many characters. The two female adolescences in this novel take us to high and low heights, just like a carnival ride. It’s overwhelming, irrational and dangerous, and there is no one to help, just as it has been for Indigenous people from the moment colonizers stepped foot on this continent of Turtle Island. Carnival Lights is powerful storytelling. Indigenous ancestors are persistently returning, so as not to be forgotten in death and memory, and Stark puts the reader right in the center of their pain and struggles.”

Mary K. Kunesh, Minnesota Senator, Standing Rock Lakota descendant, chair of Minnesota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women taskforce

“Carnival Lights is a powerful story of resilience, an emotional rollercoaster ride and an expression of the raw truth of multigenerational trauma. Sher, a lesbian and protector, or what we call ‘two-spirit,’ is particularly connected with the old ways.”

Lenny Hayes, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, and Two-Spirit activist

“Chris Stark weaves Native spirituality throughout Carnival Lights from the 1960s, before the Religious Freedom Act of 1978. We will lay under a fern, waiting for a drop of water to fall from the tip of the leaf with Em, feel the freedom of fleeing a***e with Kris and get to know the protector Sher who watches over Kris like a wolf. Carnival Lights reminds us that we are not alone, and we are watched over by ones we would have never known or seen if it were not for this desperate moment we are in right now. Chris Stark reminds us how important our teachings are, how our memories can comfort us in our darkest hour when we need it the most. Chris draws us into the inspiration and comfort provided to the characters at times guiding their next move.”

Babette Sandman, Ojibwe elder, White Earth Nation enrolled citizen living in Duluth

“The novel Carnival Lights twirls like a vine between the past and the present. Two Indian girls and their families are bound by the racism and entitlement that have taken their bodies and their land since Columbus. The imprint of culture handed down by the ancestors is the key to survival through constant danger and uncertainty. Chris Stark provides a deeper understanding of Indian culture and oppression. You cannot put this book down. Once read, you cannot plead ignorance about the continuing g******e in America of the First Nation people. The time to act is now!”

LaJune Lange, retired District Court Judge and human rights advocate

“Chris Stark has done a beautiful job of incorporating this story of cousins; Sher and Kristin, within a historical and cultural narrative. The trauma that they experience is a familiar tale for many of us. I did not just read this story.... I felt this story and I journeyed with Sher and Kristin in all directions, and through many emotions. The connection to the story of Native women today is clear and brilliantly written. Chi miigwetch, Chris!”

Nicole Matthews, ED of Minnesota Indian Women’s s****l Assault Coalition, White Earth Anishinaabe

“Through the story of two young Indian girls, Chris Stark’s poetic language takes us to the white men’s annihilation of the Indians through disease, displacement, disappearance, s****l violence, physical and cultural g******e and vicious, malevolent cruelty. An intersecting thread of the extermination of the Jews is woven throughout the context of perpetrators, victims, survivors and the land, in what Stark describes as the ‘spiral’ and interconnectedness of all Indian stories.

“The narrative crosses generations to unfold the sources of destruction with a sense of place and character that is heart-wrenching. At the same time, Stark evokes the beauty and vitality of Native traditions, beliefs and relationships, and she infuses her writing with the hope that the people will endure despite almost insurmountable obstacles and unbearable grief. This beautifully-written book should enrage us and move us to seek justice for Indian women and men.”

Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., executive director, World Without Genocide

“The Indigenous story is often untold—even though we are the first Americans. Chris Stark has written a powerful and vivid account of the Indigenous experience from 1860 through 2019 and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. She gives a realistic account of generations of Indigenous people and walks the reader through layers of exploitation, a***e, loss and perseverance. Chris does a masterful job of showing the deeply contrasting views of colonizers and Indigenous people and the often devastating outcome of those differences. While not always easy to read, it will capture your imagination and encourage you to learn more and to, hopefully, drive your commitment to make the future a brighter one for all.”

Dr. Priscilla Day, professor, UMN Duluth social work department, Anishinaabe tribal member

“Carnival Lights is a terrific read. It’s a tough subject matter but brilliantly written. I could feel, smell and taste what the characters were going through while at the fair and throughout the novel. Wonderfully written.”

Terri Forliti, Survivor and Executive Director of Breaking Free, an Afro-centric program helping women escape p**********n and trafficking

“A remarkable narrative of two very young women’s quest for sanctuary, on a continent that others have taken over, forms the axis upon which Ms. Stark pivots history—vertically and horizontally—enabling us to see the young heroines in their ancestral, clan and family legacies. We learn much in the process and abhor much as we come to understand how it is to be perceived as less than human in one’s homeland.”

Ninotchka Rosca, novelist

“Chris Stark tells a story that raises, to consciousness realities, sensibilities that exist and surround or are within us but most wish to stay hidden, in a way that weaves time, place, memory and spirit. Her voice is unique, courageous and Indigenous. She tells the story of generations of indigenous women that others talk about in intellectual terms of g******e, colonization, s*x trafficking and survival, in a way that pulls from ancestral memories and spirit, and makes the journey of Carnival Lights, uncomfortably, amazingly familiar and personal. Reading Carnival Lights is an unsettling and healing experience.”

Brenda Hill, Siksika

“A heartbreaking account of the violence Indigenous women face down every day in this country, even in broad daylight, even now. Predators abound in this short but powerful book but so, too, does love—love of the earth and love of each other. Even at the hour of death, Stark insists on life. That she does is a gift to us all.”

Julian Aguon, author of The Properties of Perpetual Light

“Chris Stark has done it again—she has provided the context that is so conspicuous in its absence in mainstream literature. In her second novel, Carnival Lights, Stark presents us with the missing context behind the lives of two Indigenous runaway girls in 1969. This context has been historically missing because it involves a diligent and artful untangling of dozens of intersecting immigrant narratives that are also tightly interwoven with the histories of Minnesota’s Indigenous people. Much of the backstory in Carnival Lights illuminates the intergenerational trauma of Native Americans refracted through fragments of ritual, anecdote, rumor and legend. The canon of American road narratives is challenged and enriched by Stark’s powerful story.”

Carolyn Gage, playwright, author and activist

“I’ve been hoping and waiting for this book ever since the author’s groundbreaking debut novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation. Now Carnival Nights confirms Chris Stark’s place as one of America’s most important authors. This is a story of America never before told. Epic in its temporal and geographical journey, and entirely original in its style, this devastating, lyrical and riveting book belongs on every list of great American novels.”

Professor Zoe Trodd, director of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham

“Chris Stark’s Carnival Lights hop-skips forward, back and across Minnesota from 1860 to 2010, drawing together threads in the connections between three Ojibwe girls and their families. Stark weaves together ancestral blood memory, dreams, family stories, settler history and a river of trauma that runs through the lives of the girls and their women relatives. She shines a spotlight into the dark corners of Minnesota history, focused on events and experiences of Ojibwe people that have become buried, much like the bones she describes as scattered throughout the site of a settlers’ m******e of Indian women, children, and elders. Stark tells us that the need to protect and survive forced parents away from the ceremonies that once connected them to the realm of spirits on the land and brought balance to all of creation. And she shows us connections bent and snapped, pushed aside by violence and a***e. But she also writes of circling back, sharing and protecting, remembering and dreaming and, finally, reclaiming those connections to one another and to the spirits of the land.”

Alexandra “Sandi” Pierce (Seneca), PhD sociology, author of Shattered Hearts: The Commercial s****l Exploitation of American Indian Women and Girls in Minnesota

“Stark tells us a story—one that’s filled with rage and love; connection and separation; shame and pride. This is the story, the heartbreakingly beautiful story, that holds your breath as you read it. For some of us, it’s our story, told back to us with all the honesty and nostalgia and horror we remember. For others, it’s her story, and you’re in it, even if you’ve never heard of it before. Now is the time to sit with this.”

Cherry Smiley, radical feminist from the Nlaka’pamux and Dine’ Nations, PhD candidate in communication studies, founder of Women’s Studies Online”