Kaylynn Sullivan Twotrees. Somebody Always Singing You. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. 166pp. $26.00.

There are many good moments of personal insight, disclosure, and introspection in Twotrees' Somebody Always Singing You. Twotrees writes in such a way that draws one in by her use of language and personal narrative as her story involves the childhood of conflicting identities as an African-American/Lakota woman growing up in the 1950's. Her book contains the memoir of her life utilizing descriptive details and unique language inviting the reader into her world of pain, discovery, and becoming. At her best, Twotrees has a way of "letting the reader in" on exactly what she was feeling by describing the environment of the event taking place. The following passage describes the author's reflection of the day of her own mother's murder at the tender age of 6:

He was absorbed, working on something. He looked different. Everything looked different. The wallpaper pattern was illuminated so that it was not just background. It was alive and full of light. The looped weave upholstery of the chair and couch stood out like a foreground in a still life. It also gave me space to look at Will. He had a box of bullets in his lap. He was working in slow motion, filing ends of them with a metal file. I had been hunting enough with Uncle Lonnie and Uncle Billy to know that he wanted to hurt something badly. I thought that maybe raccoons were getting in the garbage again at Lonnie's, but that thought did not sit well with me. I went quietly to my room, forgetting the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Twotrees integrates short, clear-cut sentences with meaningful words that paint a picture throughout the narrative of her life. The beginning of the book containing the information and story of her childhood is quick and can be considered "page-turning" while the end of the book reflects more on her spiritual life as a middle-aged woman searching for her identity. One may be reminded of the story, "A Better Porch," as it too is a narrative that explores the life of the woman and all of life's positive and negative aspects. Twotrees' vision is one of a blurry Native American heritage that may be complicated to comprehend from a Caucasian viewpoint. Her grasp on reality may seem far from the norm, yet her insight on the spiritual side of life and discovering one's identity is solidly conveyed in the following passage:

I sat very still and watched the sun rise in the sky. When it was overhead I stood up. This was the sun of no shadows and it was worth waiting for. Everything was naked in its light, revealing truth to those with courage enough to look. I had come here often and slept under the juniper or watched the shadows of eagles and ravens on the rocks. Now I returned to pray for the dreaming of our family. I had come to call to the eagles. This was the one place on the mesa where golden eagles soared on the currents created by this giant cut in the land. I faced east, toward the sacred mountain of Taos. The sun forced me to squint until my eyes were slits searching the sky for the wanbli oyate, the eagle nation…I waited and called to the spirits of the four winds for my granddaughter.

Twotrees creatively integrates her identity as an African American/Lakota woman through her use of language from each ancestry. However, later in the book she strays away from her identity as such and focuses more on her femininity and life as a woman in our part of the world and beyond. She does not use much dialogue and does not rely on descriptions of others unless it had an integral part of her story.

The story may remind one of a new-age type of book that explores the inner self in relation to the earth, animals, and art. Little does Twotrees mention or explore the lives of others; rather, she focuses on herself throughout the whole story. Possibly frustrating to some readers, the author leaves out some seemingly significant information including the story of what happened to her father, how her first marriage ended, and what her plan for life is, exactly. By using poetic and descriptive language, Twotrees seems to have chosen not to explain what happened in these instances, leaving her readers "dangling by a thread" in anticipation only to be disappointed at an ending that does not satisfy these curiosities.

Somebody Always Singing You is a touching book that explores the love the author has for her Lakota grandmother and the conflicts she deals with throughout her life. The conflicts are well described but seem to lack in drawing in the reader towards the end of the book. A strong beginning is perhaps what she needed to seduce a reader to finish the book. This book, short in length, is an ideal reading for one interested in learning more about ethnicity and identity issues in a short amount of time.