Rebecca Roanhorse facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Rebecca Roanhorse
Roanhorse at the 2022 Texas Book Festival
Born	Rebecca Parish (1971-03-14) March 14, 1971 (age 53) Conway, Arkansas
Nationality	American
Occupation	novelist lawyer science fiction writer
Spouse(s)	Michael Roanhorse
Awards	John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 2018 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, 2018 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, 2017

Rebecca Roanhorse (born March 14, 1971) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer from New Mexico. She has written short stories and science fiction novels featuring Navajo characters. Her work has received Hugo and Nebula awards, among others.

Background and family

Rebecca Parish was born in Conway, Arkansas, in 1971. She was adopted as a child by white parents, and raised in northern Texas. She has said that "being a black and Native kid in Fort Worth in the '70s and '80s was pretty limiting"; thus, she turned to reading and writing, especially science fiction, as a form of escape. Her father was an economics professor, and her mother was a high school English teacher who encouraged Rebecca's early attempts at writing stories.

Roanhorse graduated from Yale University and later earned her JD degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law, specializing in Federal Indian Law and lived for several years on the Navajo Nation, where she clerked at the Navajo Supreme Court before working as an attorney.

In a 2020 profile by Vulture, Roanhorse said that at 7 years old she learned from looking at her birth certificate that she is "half-Black and half–Spanish Indian". While living and working in New York City, she hired a private investigator to track down her birth mother. The resulting reunion was uncomfortable, as her birth and adoption had been a secret. According to the Vulture profile, "Her birth father, a minister, had never learned of her existence. Neither had most of her mother’s extended family — conservative Pueblo Catholics from New Mexico. One of her aunts, a former nun, later told her, “It would be better if you went away.”" Roanhorse has said that she is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo descent through her mother's family, and African American on her father's side.

When she began publishing and doing speaking engagements, others pointed out that she is not an enrolled member of any tribal community. Leaders of the Ohkay Owingeh community have stated that Roanhorse is not enrolled there and has no connection to their community. Dr. Matthew Martinez, former Lieutenant Governor of Ohkay Owingeh, welcomed Roanhorse on her first and only visit to the community, in 2018, and spent time with her. He said, "I recognize that adoption is an emotional experience for families and communities and especially those who have been adopted out with no real connection to home....At Ohkay Owingeh, our current enrollment process privileges family lineage and not blood quantum." Agoyo explained that "anyone who descends from an Ohkay family - as Roanhorse has publicly claimed - can become a citizen. But Martinez said the author has chosen a different path." Martinez continued, "by not engaging in any form of cultural and community acknowledgement, Roanhorse has failed to establish any legitimate claim to call herself Ohkay Owingeh." He eventually concluded, "It is unethical for Roanhorse to be claiming Ohkay Owingeh and using this identity to publish Native stories."

She currently lives in New Mexico with her husband, who is Navajo, and their daughter.

Career

Roanhorse told The New York Times that she initially worked on "Tolkien knockoffs about white farm boys going on journeys", because she figured that is what readers wanted.

On August 19, 2020, Roanhorse was announced as a contributing writer to Marvel Comics' Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 anthology, which was released in November 2020. She wrote a story about Echo, joined by Weshoyot Alvitre on art.

Awards and nominations