Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith.

A.Bibliographic Data:
Smith, Cynthia Leitich. 2001. Rain is Not My Indian Name. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, New York. ISBN 0-688-17397, ISBN 0-06-029504-X (lib. bdg.).

B. Plot Summary:
Rain is Not My Indian Name is a coming of age story of a fourteen year old girl that is coming to terms with the death of her best friend Galen. She lives with her older brother and his girlfriend, who she soon discovers is pregnant. Her mother had died several years earlier and her father is away in the army. Rain takes on the job of shooting the pictures for an article on the Indian Camp. She eventually ends up joining the Indian Camp which helps her accept that Galen is dead and move on. Each chapter in the book is headed with a journal entry from Rain's journal.

C. Critical Analysis:
Rain is Not My Indian Name touches on the feelings of a young Native American girl who is not familiar with her heritage, and living in a town where she is the only loval Native American. “And the so called Indians always look like bogeymen on the prairie, windblown cover boys selling paperback romances, or baby-faced refugees from the world of Precious Moments. I usually get through it by reading sci-fi fanzines behind my textbooks until we move on to Kwanza.” Rain's is not interested in her cultural heritage because of what unfortunately happens in many schools, she has been desensitized due to the lack of authentic representation of the culture. In the story Rain never actually makes the trip to the reservation, the story is about Rain gradually realizing that she really does want to connect with her cultural heritage.

E. Connections
Have students build a bridge similar to the one in the story.
Have students research the closest Indian Reservation and present their finding to the class. (Group work).