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REVIEWS
B STREET: THE NOTORIOUS PLAYGROUND OF COULEE DAM
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by Lawney L. Reyes
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| University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2008. Illustrations, photographs, maps, bibliography.184 pages. $18.95 paper. |
| B Street tells two stories related to the building of Grand Coulee Dam — one is a family story, touching and sentimental, that begins and ends upriver from the concrete monolith. The other is a story of the temporary community grown around the dam project, told through the eyes and memories of a child who lived and played among the denizens of this fleeting boomtown. |
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The book begins with the story of two young men from the Sin-Aikst band of the Colville Confederated Tribes on a hunting jaunt early one morning. This first section is filled with imagery and lyricism; the Native sections of the book are the ones the author writes best. While on the hunt, the young men spot Bureau of Reclamation surveyors marking how high the river will rise once the dam is complete. The men are stunned to discover that the water will rise so high it will drown their reservation town of Inchelium and the prized Kettle Falls fishing area. |
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Like the rest of the country, members of Inchelium and surrounding communities experienced daily financial struggles during the Great Depression. Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, begun in 1933, meant jobs, and jobs meant that men and families traveled from across the state and the country to earn good wages on the project. When Julian and Mary Reyes, the author's parents, learn of the eventual flooding of their home town and of the great construction project about to commence a day's drive away, they decide to take a chance. Julian and Mary move their small family to Grand Coulee and open a Chinese food restaurant, the Woo Dip, even though neither has prepared Chinese food before. |
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This gamble takes them away from their friends and family and inserts them in a brand new life — where engineering and industry shift and shape the land and river, and where women count themselves as commodities alongside other commercial prospects such as stores and restaurants and bars. |
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As the author focuses on the dam's construction and the workers and their community, he loses the thread of the Reyes family's story for nearly forty pages. The stories of Coulee Dam and B Street are interesting enough, but broad stories of workingmen and pretty ladies do not offer as much insight as the perspectives of the parents and children who were affected in great and awful ways by the construction of the dam. The Reyes family's story is the most compelling part of the book. |
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When Reyes returns to his family's story — the trepidation of doing something completely new, the first days of unsuccessfully cooking foreign food, the satisfaction derived from finally mastering a cuisine and a business, and the joy in becoming part of the vibrant, if transient, community — his voice and his writing reflect the pride he feels at participating in a historic moment of Washington history. |
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While Reyes includes few memories or comments from other tribal members who suffered the flooding of their homes and sacred fishing waters, the compelling photos accompanying this section indicate the pain community members experienced. Tight, cautious faces look out from under ceremonial dress, each attired to honor the river, and to say goodbye to the falls. |
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This book offers a nice counterpart to drier stories of reclamation and is a quick read that would be suitable in classes on Native Studies, memory, biography, and history. |
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| LAURIE ARNOLD
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| Notre Dame, Indiana |
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