FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Native Travel Memoir Lights the Way to Making Kin and Building Community Around the Globe
From celebrated California Indian journalist Terria Smith, a debut memoir that explores the personal intersections of travel and Indigeneity in Cuba, Guyana, and beyond.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — The genre of travel writing has, for too long, been the domain of settlers: so-called “explorers” whose journeys and way of being in the world have seeped into the foundation of everyday life on the move, from militarized borders to the names of mountains, rivers, and deserts. But travel is a lot older than settler colonialism. In many ways, the urge to travel—to meet new people, share stories and experiences, and be in relationship with parts of the world previously unknown to you—can be a lived and fully embodied practice of resistance.
In her debut memoir, I Love You So Many: A Native Memoir of Adventure, Culture, and Family, Terria Smith traces her journey from the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Reservation to journalism school, and her decision to travel the United States to tell about the lives of Native people from one coast to another. As her hunger for travel grew, so did her understanding of community, and what it means to be a world citizen. In warm and thrilling prose, Terria takes readers with her on trips across the Americas, spending time in Cuba, Iceland, and Guyana as she falls in and out of love and develops lifelong bonds with the people she meets.
The phrase “I Love You So Many” comes from a phrase used by Terria’s Spanish-speaking relatives: what would be considered by some to be an error of translation is refigured here as an opening to celebrate the many-ness of our loves, populated with people, animals, islands, and life. I Love You So Many is a book that challenges a certain way of thinking about travel, and invites readers into Terria’s infectious enthusiasm for stepping outside and seeing what you can give the world and the amazing experiences it can give back to you.
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Praise for I Love You So Many
“I Love You So Many is an Indigenous memoir that chronicles Terria Smith’s journey of self-discovery and acceptance through global travel, relationality, and family history. Moving from Alaska to Cuba, Iceland, Guyana, and beyond, Smith explores themes of Indigenous identity, resilience, and love while navigating personal challenges like divorce, migration, and loss. Embedded in a beautifully chronicled travelogue of her unfolding life—her unflinching truths become touchstones, illuminated and validated with each stamp on her passport. Joining the ranks of Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians and Therese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, this memoir celebrates healing, empowerment, and the enduring strength of Indigenous mobility in an accessible and interconnected world.”
—Theresa Gregor, Professor of American Indian Studies, California State University-Long Beach
“Terria Smith has gifted us something we don’t see so much of: a Native travel narrative that is more than just the fish-out-of-water, “Indian leaves the rez and is overwhelmed” trope. I can almost hear the gasps of readers marveling at the idea that Indians travel at all! Smith is a wonderful guide in showing that we absolutely do, and that our experiences at home provide us insights beyond what most American travelers may bring with them when they go abroad. At the core of this quarter-century unfolding is Smith’s personal origin story as a mighty, independent Indigenous woman with a deep love for her traditional land finding her power in a broader, borderless world; in worlds, really, both inner and outer varieties of them. Smith’s journey is full of heart and humor, and a different version of Native memoir from what we usually get and I am grateful for the opportunity to travel with her.”
— Chris La Tray, author of Becoming Little Shell
“This book is like a letter from your best friend telling you what really happened during her trip.”
— Ursula Pike, author of An Indian Among Los Indígenas
“Smith beautifully weaves together stories from her life as a Desert Cahuilla woman on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation in the Coachella Valley desert, with her travels as an engaged and intrepid traveler who represents her deep, desert-based indigenous roots while also seeking to engage and learn and connect with indigenous people and cultures everywhere she goes. Please read this book. It is a journey you need to travel along with, learn from, and celebrate with, and your life will be all the much richer for it.”
— Ruth Nolan, editor of No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California’s Deserts
Terria Smith is a tribal member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and a proud original Californian. She is the editor of News from Native California magazine and director of the Berkeley Roundhouse, Heyday’s California Indian publishing program. Smith is also the editor of the 2023 anthology Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance. She received her undergraduate degree at Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University) and earned her master’s degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
