How do you think identity and community affect healing? How did you see this represented in the novel?
There would be no need for healing if positive social identity and a place in a supportive community had existed for these characters. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s foundational Hierarchy of Human Needs starts at the base of the pyramid with physical needs—itself a challenge for dispossed people—then for security, which again is a challenge for them. The next level is the need for belonging, not just to a family but within a larger community… Forced migration, forced assimilation, being treated as an inferior and/or enemy… That is no basis for the next levels of development, which we see Loother, Orvil and Lony struggling with: feelings of self-regard, accomplishment, self-determination, fulfillment. They have gifts but can’t bring themselves to believe in those gifts. But I do have hope for Orvil…
Identity and community are linked. You often find community (love, support, etc), through community structures (church, school, etc).
I don’t think that anyones identity was helped in this book by the community they lived in. They were all immured with the same problems- so how do you help someone just like yourself? The only times community seemed to help was when they got together for their powwows