A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. By Michael Dorris.
Michael Dorris'
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water describes the lives of three Native American women. Dorris complicates the novel, however, by having each woman narrate one section of the story from her own perspective with each woman's story adding new layers of meaning to their collective intergenerational saga. In addition, Dorris further complicates the plot by presenting the three stories in reverse order with Rayona, the "granddaughter," telling her story first, followed by her mother, Christine, and then her "grandmother," Aunt Ida. Consequently, Dorris' novel reads like a complex mystery, and the reader must carefully piece together its plot by continually uncovering new information and reassessing previous information as the story unfolds backwards in time.
I read this novel my sophomore year of college and I think it fits theme in the sense of a child trying to find themselves. For the reasons of this project I would focus on the character Rayona. She like the kids in Child's Play was trying to figure out her true identity, but instead of already knowing her end through her family's legacy she had to learned thru the dysfunction of her mother and grandmother.
