Literature for Children and Young Adults: Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Bibliography

Smith, Cynthia Leitich. 2001. RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 006029504

Plot Summary

Cassidy Rain Berghoff is a mixed race (Native American and white) girl growing up in a small town. At fourteen, she has experienced the death of her mother and the shocking death of her best friend, Galen. When we meet Rain, she and Galen have started a budding romance after years of being best friends. The same evening of their first kiss, Galen runs home and is hit and killed by a car. Cassidy goes into hiding refusing to go to the funeral or to talk to anyone. Rain’s father is in the military and is stationed overseas leaving Rain and her older brother Fynn to live with their grandfather. Fynn’s girlfriend, Natalie has moved in rather quickly only to find out that she is pregnant. Everyone is worried about her but Rain refuses to even go to the grocery store. Fynn is especially worried and attempts to get her to go to the camp for Native American children that her aunt is hosting. She refuses but becomes interested in taking pictures of the camp when Natalie expresses that she wants to run a feature on the camp in the newspaper. When Rain accepts the job, she quickly realizes that there is racism and bigotry that accompanies the camp. When Rain steps up to join the fight, she begins to honor her heritage and to heal from the tragedy of losing Galen.

Critical Analysis

Cynthia Leitich Smith has written a story of tragedy and healing. Smith lived for a time in northeastern Kansas and attended college in Douglas County-the home of the fictional town of Hannesburg where Rain lives. In a note to readers, Smith explains that the county is real but the town of Hannesburg and the characters are fictional.

There are cultural elements throughout this novel, primarily focused around the main character and her struggle to embrace her Native American roots. Her mother embraced her heritage but her father and even Rain struggle with the identity. When she pulls out her mother’s traditional tear dress, Rain acknowledges that the dress “looked wrong somehow, more like a museum piece than part of living.”(21) Rain is Muscogee Creek-Cherokee and Scots-Irish from her mom's family and Irish-German-Ojibwa from her dad's family. In one of Rain's journal entries she says that her father never talked about their Ojibwa blood and that her grandmother "called herself "just Irish" or "black Irish" everyday of her life. Rain is presented as an ordinary American girl. She eats a wide variety of American foods, attends a Baptist church, is a fan of science fiction, and wears jeans and high tops. Rain loves photography so she always has her camera with her. Smith has written a novel that will allow readers to understand that Native Americans are not sleeping in tents and hunting animals with bow and arrows but are contemporary people. Contemporary issues such as racism, dealing with grief, gossip, friendship and pregnancy are all present in this story adding to the authenticity of the story.

Review Excerpts

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2002)
Fourteen-year-old Rain, of mixed Native American heritage, is devastated by her best friend's death. She comes out of her self-imposed seclusion to shoot photos for a local newspaper feature on a summer youth program for Native Americans in her Kansas hometown. The engaging first-person narrative convincingly portrays Rain’s grieving process and addresses the varying degrees of prejudice she encounters.

Uma Krishnaswami (Children's Literature)
Fourteen-year-old Rain decides to get herself a teen life, little knowing that disaster awaits her best friend Galen, about whom she is only just beginning to experience the first tingles of romantic promise. Ridden with guilt and misery, Rain closes her world in upon itself. But then her Aunt Georgia decides to run an Indian Camp, and Rain's reluctant actions on her behalf threaten to drastically backfire. What follows is a summer of turmoil and realization, in which Rain is forced to come to terms with the tragic events she has lived through, the world in which she lives and her sense of self. Smith (author of Jingle Dancer) portrays a protagonist with a genuine voice and an appealing sense of humor. Aunt Georgia's red hair, Grampa's notes from Las Vegas, pasta bridges and all, this rendering of a contemporary family of Native American heritage is wonderfully far from stereotypical "dream catchers, the kind with fakelore gift tags."