Stick Houses: Stories

As researchers tried to prompt his mother to say that her ancestors lived in wigwams or teepees, Matthew L. M. Fletcher's mother insisted her ancestors lived in stick houses. From the opening lines of Fletcher's story collection, he sets the scene to disrupt narrative stereotypes and expectations about how Indigenous people are perceived. He provides insight into the complex world in which Anishinaabe people live, stripped of the ownership of much of their homeland. In Stick Houses, Fletcher explores what this loss of place has meant to the Anishinaabe people of Michigan. It explores how they must leave and come back. There is dispossession and separation, but there is also reunion and restoration.
These stories explore themes of home and belonging, and how Native people are not just one thing; they are both Native and non-Native blood. Some are deeply connected to their Anishinaabe heritage, while others have suffered a complete loss of their culture. Many Native people are conflicted about their background and suffer intergenerational trauma. These stories originate in dynamic environments and situations such as airports, college, Indian lawyering, and high school baseball games.


Author: Matthew L. M. Fletcher
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Published: 01/01/2025
Pages: 130
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.40d
ISBN13: 9781611865233
ISBN10: 1611865239
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | General

About the Author
Matthew L. M. Fletcher is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law and professor of American culture at the University of Michigan Law School. He is the author of Ghost Road: Anishinaabe Responses to Indian Hating, which has won several independent publisher awards. He has also published stories in the graphic story collections Trickster (10th anniversary edition) and A Howl. Fletcher is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Fletcher graduated from the University of Michigan. He is married to Wenona Singel, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and they have two sons, Owen and Emmett.