The Cold-and-Hunger Dance

By Diane Glancy
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1998

Review by Faith Hagenhofer, Library Director, Nisqually Tribal Library

In this collection of essays, Diane Glancy explores her roots and reasons for being a writer. She describes her “hunger for words”, in a cold, quiet home of mixed Cherokee and German heritage.  Feeling she was neither this nor that, she desperately needed to make a voice and a presence for herself over and over again. She is buoyed by a very personal and hard-wrought Christianity.

The writing is almost confessional, like late night, intimate phone conversations or emails between newly discovered kindred spirits. Many of the essays are a bit rambling for my taste. This book joins a fine tradition of once marginalized voices that demand to be heard.