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Breeds

Breeds is a collection of Roxy's stories, drawings, poetry, and essays. They are infused with a wisdom that brings history alive without casting judgment on anyone. Roxy's writings give a deeper and more subtle meaning to what it means to be a "Native American".

An excerpt from the short story, "Pilgrims", available in this collection:

"It was after Burned Black Horn had passed middle age that he had begun to have flashes that something was more dreadfully wrong than he had suspected. True, many of his relatives and friends had died a long time ago at the hands of the Tejanos and the army and true, he and his surviving relatives and friends had been in most ways confined and kept from the haunts and pursuits of earlier days. But still the Wichita Mountains where the Burned Black Horn family camped was a good place and the Burned Black Horn camp was full of his friends and relatives and many descendants. Burned Black Horn was never very hungry -- those Wichita Mountains provided better than the white agent provided.

"And in the part of his self that listened, Burned Black Horn heard the same murmuring of that-which-is-and-was-and-will-be that he had always heard. Burned Black Horn was neither particularly philosophical nor, in the mumbo-jumbo terms of the whiteman's explanation of religion, was he particularly religious. It was just that the part of his self that could hear always clearly heard the sweet murmur of that-which-is-and-was-and-will-be. This was what Burned Black Horn heard every moment of his life until one bad hot August when he was past middle age and then he didn't hear anything at all.

"Burned Black Horn wouldn't have been able to say that he'd lost the murmur in the part of his self that heard. And he wouldn't have been able to say that, at long last, these years later, the universe was truly turned upside down. But after a generation of silence in the part of his self that heard, he had said to his son Amos, 'I want to go back to the places I lived when I was a boy.'"

Critical praise for Breeds:

BREEDS is a lively tough good book and the proof is my son picked it up and said admiringly “this is tough!”

I hope you did not write “Pilgrims” by accident, for it is surely the strongest short story I've read in a long, long time . . . Mostly I like the fact that you do not shy away from significance, or maybe I mean universality.

BREEDS is a cold-blooded premeditated act of love . . . flat-out and straight to the bone. As far as I'm concerned, you can't ask for writing to be anymore than that. It is a true book.

BREEDS is strong and delicate all at once . . . graphics absolutely adding effect and power . . . and that Joe Hill piece is where I started saying delicate and strong--so intelligent and no word wasted

Like the best of the old cowboys, men who lived long with the land and respected it for its silences and its power, Roxy Gordon speaks softly and knows a good story. Like his Choctaw ancestors, who easily adopted many white customs (and many white people) but remained Indian--as did their children after them--he has also learned to look beyond the surface to see with the eye of the heart.