Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn

From Publishers Weekly Colton arrived in Crow, Mont., ready to write a book about a season of boy's high school basketball in the Crow Indian community. But when he saw graceful Sharon Laforge shooting hoops, he was drawn to her athleticism and fascinated by the dichotomy between her on-court focus and her off-court distractedness. To get closer to Laforge, Colton tracks her senior year on the Lady Bulldogs, from the first practice through tournament play. He rides the team bus, assists at practice, wins a spot as an "honorary seventeen-year-old girl," and is eventually adopted into the tribe by Laforge's family. In Laforge, Colton finds a young woman in distress; as she attempts to fulfill her own and her family's hopes, she struggles with the uglier legacies of her community: alcoholism, domestic abuse, abandonment, shortsighted tribal politics, fierce racism and misogyny. In search of a happy ending, Colton follows as Laforge sticks it out with her abusive boyfriend, raises two boys and struggles toward her high school and college degrees. To his credit, Colton effectively employs his position as an outsider to explore the group's culture, and his long-term perspective allows him to convey the drive Laforge needs to survive. However, by centering his focus on one person, he misses opportunities to reflect on larger questions. (In particular, he seems unaware of Ian Frazier's writing about Sharon Big Crow, a basketball star and hopeful who juggled similar pressures on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota.) Nonetheless, Colton's love of basketball and caring insights deliver a sad but ultimately hopeful sort of Hoop Dreams, complete with the struggle for maturity, a community's collective dream and the athletic grace that can momentarily hold the world at bay. Author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist On many Indian reservations, high-school basketball has become a popular venue for expressing the pride of Native Americans. Yet for all the promise these young Indian athletes exhibit, few are able to overcome the negative forces--poverty, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, poor education--that surround them. Colton, a former professional baseball player and veteran author, spent 15 months on the Crow reservation in Montana observing the Hardin High School girls' basketball team. He focuses on the players--especially talented Sharon LaForge--and their relationships with their teammates and coaches, but he also explores the social conditions that affect the players' lives. Alcoholism is a reservation plague, but drug abuse, domestic violence, shoddy education, and low personal expectations also help prevent these children from ever reaching their potential, on and off the court. But Colton also finds joy, humor, and ethnic pride among the reservation populace. Similar in tone to Kareem Abdul Jabbar's recent A Season on the Reservation , Colton's book tells an inspirational story but one firmly grounded in reality. There are no Hoosier -like state championships and no soaring personal triumphs. Sharon LaForge doesn't get a college scholarship; she ends up pregnant, and she quits basketball. But she also enrolls in junior college and is doggedly pursuing her education despite long odds. On the rez, victories are not recorded in scorebooks or by sweeping social reform, but by proud people taking control of their lives inch by hard-fought inch. Wes Lukowsky Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved From Kirkus Reviews The social dilemmas faced by present-day Native Americans are revealed in this journalistic look at a high school girls' basketball team in Crow, Montana.In a previous book, Goat Brothers (1993), Colton examined the lives of fraternity brothers from the 1960s to the 1990s. Here, he spends a season living and observing the Hardin High School girls' basketball team, a team comprised of white girls and Crow Indians. Although Colton manages to give a face to the different players, he is particularly fascinated by 17-year-old Sharon Laforge, an extremely talented American Indian who hopes to earn a college basketball scholarship, but whose future is threatened by several factors, including an absentee father, an alcoholic mother, a possessive and abusive boyfriend, an undisciplined lifestyle, and pressure from peers and community. The racial oppression that Native Americans still face, especially in small rural towns, is another factor. Hardin's population of 2,990 is 49 percent Crow Indian, and mistrust and misunderstanding exists between cultures: the Crows see the whites as having inherited privilege, and the working-class whites see the Crows as having access to government funds, services, and scholarships that they themselves cannot get. In addition, the emerging status of women, especially star athletes such as Sharon, threatens the downtrodden and jealous Crow men who traditionally are used to being in charge. "Counting coup," an Indian battle term that referred to warriors gaining honor, respect, and dignity, is now also a Hardin High School basketball term that refers to dominating one's opponent. In this Hoop Dreams for American Indians, Colton shows how a handful of girls try to count coup against opponents who appear on more than just the basketball court.Colton's account of the environment he witnesses, while not particularly enlightening, does provide good dramatic background for his story of the team's attempt to make, and win, the state championship. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Read more