COME HOME, INDIO

Terry’s graphic autobiography is a roller-coaster ride of doubt and discovery, addiction and recovery.

The author’s experiences growing up Ho-Chunk and Irish in the 1970s and ’80s set the stage for an unflinching account of what it means to grow up Indigenous and American. As he describes how he split his time between the suburbs of Chicago and his reservation in Wisconsin, Terry chronicles the turmoil, injury, and excess of being raised by artistic, alcoholic parents. His Irish father worked as a jazz musician, and his Ho-Chunk mother was a feminist force of nature even as she battled lupus. When they divorced, Terry struggled to overcome the damage of domestic violence while making sense of the conflicting cultures in his life. Dumped by his Christian girlfriend and afraid that he would never fit in, his identity issues led him down the path to alcohol abuse. Covering his entire life from childhood to the present day with dark and evocative art, the author writes at a very fast clip, skimming over large sections of his adulthood with little explanation. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who was able to fully express himself only after getting sober and addressing his chaotic mental state. Conquering his addiction, Terry gained control of his craft and found ways to honor the sacrifices his ancestors made for him. Not just another Bukowski-like portrait of alcoholism and discontent, the book is unique in its depiction of Terry’s struggles with Native identity issues, myths, politics, and histories. This tale of spiritual healing culminates with the author joining the Indigenous protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, where he learned the power of peaceful resistance. “It was astonishing,” he writes, “and the opposite of how I’d been trained by the culture of fear.”

Ambitious in scope, the book breaks ground for contemporary Native portrayals in nonfiction.