gendered violence

• explores the particular difficulties faced by Native women and how those struggles stem from an often-toxic culture surrounding sexuality, tribal identity, and gender.
• Native women are far more likely to experience sexual violence than non-Native women and men. Often, the perpetrators of this violence are non-Native men, and because of rules against prosecuting non-Native people on reservation land, it is often impossible to bring them to justice.
• Linden Lark takes part in this terrible trend, as he not only violently rapes Geraldine, but he also abducts and murders Mayla out of jealousy over her relationship with another man.
• Many other men in the novel, both Native and non-Native, mistreat women in ways much less severe
• Curtis Yeltow, for example, sleeps with underage Mayla, using his power as a governor and an older man to manipulate her. Whitey, Joe’s beloved uncle, beats Sonja, a fact that seems to be known amongst the rest of Joe’s family and goes more or less ignored. Even Joe, the story’s protagonist, treats Sonja poorly.
• boys and young men are indoctrinated with problematic senses of entitlement to women, whom they sexualize in ways that are often degrading and dehumanizing. 
• Joe’s actions surprise both himself and Sonja, and after the dance Sonja, angry and upset, shows Joe where her old manager cut her breast with a razor while she was a stripper.
• “lots of men cry after they do something nasty to a woman.”