Salamanca

Erin Marie Blakeslee, Purdue University

Abstract

Salamanca is a collection of eleven short stories that are each set in Salamanca, New York (the only U.S. city built on land leased from an Indian reservation) and the surrounding areas in Cattaraugus County. “The Southern Tier Expressway” is narrated by Eamon Sullivan, a fifteen-year-old living in Salamanca with his mother, Kate, and her female partner, Birdie. It introduces Eamon's conflicted feelings about his hometown and his place in it. “Endangered” tells of Bridget Dunn, a heartbroken, childless forty-five-year-old, whose ex-husband, Red, has just manipulated her into caring for him while he dies of lung cancer. She is interested in a relationship with banker Jack Meyers and pursues this by joining his Preservation Society, which aims to save the grounds of a defunct Indian Industrial School and the white deer that live there. “The Great American Folk Hero” features Eamon's uncle (Birdie's brother), John Henry, relating how he became a single father during the snowy winter of 2001-2002, when a mysterious pregnant woman came to live with him and then abandoned him with her baby. In “Bleached Sheets”, Eamon's mother Kate is killed in a car accident and a grieving, sick Birdie sends her stepson to live with his father, with whom he does not have much of a relationship. Seen through Eamon's point of view, this chain of events leaves the young man angry and plotting to run away. The Dunns, Bridget and Red, lease a home in downtown Salamanca twenty-five years ago and Bridget, though learning to accept the terms that a lease in this town entails, finds herself feeling increasingly claustrophobic and trapped in her life in the house. In “Small Town Anonymous”, John Henry prepares to attend his first Al-Anon meeting, concerned that Birdie, who now lives with him, is an alcoholic and wondering what he can do about it. “A Summer Snow” is the story of a young Sagoyewatha (who would later become John and Birdie Henry's grandfather), his trek to Salamanca and the Indian Industrial School, and a magic moment that occurs on his second night there. In “Upstate Citizens”, Eamon crashes a meeting of the group Upstate Citizens for Equality, an anti-Indian land-claim and anti-tax-sovereignty group, hoping for a juicy thrill “spying on the enemy.” He ends up being thrown out of the meeting. “Life After Elsie” is told in the voice of the elderly Amanda Sommer, Eamon's great-great-aunt, also a lesbian like his mother, who shares her history in Salamanca and encourages Kate, her great-niece, to live openly and in happiness. “Out in the Wash” finds Birdie drinking and visiting a disappointing gay bar. She takes a tour of her hometown and ends a rainy day wandering around strange geographic structures, that she believes are burial mounds, while trying to confront her recent poor decisions. “Trading Posts” shows the small, mundane ways in which little works of creation (homemade Indian flutes, cat DVDs, old plastic toys) can give the people of Salamanca – among them, John Henry, Bridget Dunn, Jack Meyers, and another character, Salamanca expatriate Vic Rockman – joy and moment of connection to the world beyond themselves.

Degree

M.F.A.

Advisors

Nguyen, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Modern literature|Fine arts|American literature|Creative writing

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