Deborah Taffa
Join us for a conversation with National Book award finalist Deborah Jackson Taffa. Taffa shares insights about her own journey as a writer, the challenges of representing her indigenous culture, and the power of storytelling to build empathy and understanding across different backgrounds.
In this episode of ArtStorming, host Lili is joined by Deborah Jackson Taffa—the Creative Writing Director at the Institute of American Indian Arts and author of a memoir recently honored as one of Time Magazine’s best nonfiction books of 2024. Deborah dives into the intentional craft required to weave hard histories of nuclear colonization and boarding schools into a narrative defined by levity and family love, rather than a standard trauma narrative, noting that true validation comes from the "aunties" back home rather than the red carpets of New York. The conversation explores the visceral difference between "interrupted" and "uninterrupted" lineages, drawing a poignant contrast between her husband’s stable Italian heritage and the "post-apocalyptic" fragmentation of the Indigenous experience.
Beyond her own writing, Deborah discusses IAIA as a living art movement where mythology must evolve to remain vital, and she describes the creative process as a ritualistic threshold crossing that places the artist in a timeless conversation with both ancestors and future generations. Ultimately, Deborah and Lili reflect on "legacy contribution" as a vital antidote to generational trauma, emphasizing that while an artist may only be a single rung in the ladder of progress, the intentionality behind fine literature and art creates a measurable field of healing that transcends the static noise of modern social media and news cycles.
