Fast Cars and Frybread:
Reports from the Rez

Gordon Johnson

Paperback, ISBN: 978-1-59714-066-9, $12.95
128 pages (5.5 x 8.5)

A BayTree Book

Memories of Indian time on the rez.

As Gordon Johnson states in his introduction, “There was a time when time wasn’t so insistent. It moved slower, held less sway. That was Indian time.” Since the advent of casinos, he says, “Indians have been window-seat passengers on the streamliner of change.” He wants his children and grandchildren to know what rez life was like before cable TV, cell phones, and laptop computers.

These essays are about fiestas with frybread and beans, storytelling, dancing, snow cones, dogfights, and sometimes human fights. They are about sweat lodges and funerals and the dangers of “commod bod” (obesity caused by eating government surplus food). They are also about puppy love and the love of
rock ’n’ roll.

From the game of peon to reminiscences about grandparents, Gordon Johnson captures the spirit of reservation life with the skill of a modern journalist and the sensitivity of one who has lived life on Indian time.

Advance Praise:

“Gordon Johnson’s world—the Pala Indian Reservation and environs—is so vivid and haunting and funny, a combination few writers can pull off, and yet Fast Cars and Frybread does so with panache, flourish, and love.”—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales

“These stories skillfully capture a world gone by and memories of life on and around a California Indian reservation, and touchingly illuminate the heart of a man remembering that world. What a pleasure to read, and how long the pleasure resonates.”—Greg Sarris, author of Watermelon Nights and Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria

About the Author :

Gordon Johnson is a Cahuilla/Cupeño from the Pala Indian Reservation in San Diego County, California. A former columnist and feature writer for the Riverside Press-Enterprise, he is the author of a book of collected columns, Rez Dogs Eat Beans, which was translated and published in the Czech Republic. He is also a contributor to the recent anthology of Inland Empire writers published by Heyday Books, Inlandia. Johnson lives in Pala and is working on his master of fine arts degree at Antioch University, Los Angeles.