Smith, Cynthia Leitich. 2001. RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-688-17397-7

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Smith, Cynthia Leitich. 2001. RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-688-17397-7 

PLOT SUMMARY 

Cassidy Rain Bergoff, a young teenager, dealing with the death of her best friend a couple of years after her mother’s death is hiding away in her home trying to deal with his sudden loss. Away from the public eye and life continuing outside, Rain is unaware of how people are talking about her best friend and her relationship on the night of his accident. As she steps foot outside her home, she runs into many people with a lot of questions. She then becomes involved with the local newspaper as she reclaims her passion for photography. With mixed emotions of what the town has been saying, she takes on the assignment to document her aunt’s Indian camp that is under a lot of controversy with the city’s funding. Navigating her way through her new assignment, she thinks about moving on with her life and hoping to start over.  

CRITICAL ANALYSIS (WITH CULTURAL MARKERS) 

Cassidy Rain is described as your typical teenager with friendships that change with the coming-of-age topics such as growing feelings for someone, friendships changing, navigating life and learning more about oneself. Rain describes herself as an average girl and compares herself to her good-looking brother. There is a good balance of good and evil as we see Rain experience two losses. Once of her mother’s and the second of her best friend. She does not attend her friend’s funeral or even visit his grave and people from the town talk about this and critisize her for it. As she begins going out more, she is faced with a decision to attend her aunt’s Native American camp which she struggled to do. Along the way she becomes involved with her aunt’s camp and all the controversy surround it throughout the town with budget and politics, so she thinks of what could possibly happen such as reuniting with old friends, making new ones and possibly becoming closer to her Native American culture.  

The setting takes place throughout Rain’s home and surroundings. Her Hannesberg town, majority white people described by Rain as "The subject of Native American’s pretty much only comes up just around Turkey Day.” Here we see the stereotype towards Native American culture in the school settings. The characters interact with people from other cultures as her best friend was not allowed to be with someone outside their culture when we read, “but there was a time when I wondered if my being Native was the reason, he’d never made a first move on me.” We can also see a painfully accurate depiction of Native American culture when Rain mentions girls from her culture were young single mothers or had multiple children at a young age.  

The ending of the story invites the reader to reflect on Rain’s decision to be made. Thinking about reuniting with Queenie and sitting with her at church again and thinking about Galen who never made a first move because of his mother’s views on dating outside their culture. This fictional coming of age story for young readers is appealing to read about internal struggles, friendships, and grief.  

REVIEW EXCERPTS/AWARDS 

Book Links, 20/01/03 

Book Report, 09/01/01 

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, 09/01/01 

Kirkus Reviews, 05/01/01 

Publishers Weekly, 07/09/01 

School Library Journal, 06/01/01 

Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) 06/01/01 

Wilson’s Junior High School, 01/09/10 

Book Report (September/October 2001): “Cassidy Rain Berghoff learns to come to terms with the death of her best friend in this solid examples of realistic fiction.” 

Horn Book Guide (Spring, 2002): “The engaging first-person narrative convincingly portrays Rain’s grieving process and addresses the varying degrees of prejudice she encounters.” 

Kirkus Reviews (May 1, 2001): “Rain has to maneuver all of this through local politics involving Galen’s mother and the local America Indian Youth Camp (with its handful of local Indian teens, and Rain’s erstwhile “second-best friend” who is black). 

CONNECTIONS 

Displaying more titles by Cynthia Leitich Smith can help readers be exposed to more stories by this author.  

Leading a book discussion about this book at a middle grades book club with book discussion questions can lead to a great discussion about friendships, grief and navigating the coming-of-age stage for this age group.  

A photography activity would be fun for students to participate in; possibly taking photos for the yearbook and sharing their photography skills such as Rain did in this story.  

Smith, Cynthia Leitich. ON A WING AND A TEAR. ISBN 978-0-06-287000-1 

Peterson, J.C. LOLA AT LAST. ISBN 978-0-06-306018-0 

Foley, Jessie Ann. SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. ISBN 978-0-06-257191-5