March 12 - Whiskey Tender: A Memoir

“Tell me your favorite childhood memory and I’ll tell you who you are,” writes Deborah Taffa in the chapter “Animas” in Whiskey Tender. 

For Women’s History Month, we’ll read Deborah Taffa’s memoir Whiskey Tender, explore our childhood memories, and see how they shaped who we are today. We’ll heighten our awareness of our inner and outer worlds via discussions and writing prompts led by award winning wine writer and Ventura College adjunct English professor Gwendolyn Alley. Enjoy a moonbath as the almost full moon rises at 5:47pm and prepare for the lunar eclipse by contemplating what is hidden by the light, and what is revealed by darkness. Add discussion questions and favorite quotes from the reading to a large butcher paper poster – drawings too!

At 6pm we will start our discussion of the book and writing prompts with a break to check out the sunset at 7p. With a lunar eclipse the following day, and the vernal equinox a week later, we will incorporate these astronomical events into our evening’s program and prompts, and finish at 8pm. Bring a notebook and a fast pen. You may also bring a sketchbook.

Gwendolyn studied Native American Lit extensively in grad school, and met Deborah 20 years ago at the Taos Poetry Circus. Deborah’s debut Whiskey Tender generated significant buzz: it’s a 2024 National Book Award Finalist, a 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction longlisted title, on 2024’s Top 10 books listed by The Atlantic, Audible, and Time Magazine, and on best and notable lists at The New Yorker, Elle, Esquire, NPR, The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and Publisher’s Weekly. Deborah is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo who earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Whiskey Tender “traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories.”