One Book/One Community

The 2026-2027 One Book, One Community selection is Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa!

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One Book/One Community is excited to announce our 2026-2027 selection, Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa.

"Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”

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. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.

Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking analysis of Indigenous history laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance."

-Harper Collins Publishers

About the Author

Award-winning memoirist, Deborah Jackson Taffa, is the author of Whiskey Tender, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award. Named a top book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Oprah Daily, Audible, and Publisher's Weekly, the memoir won both a Southwest Book Prize and an International Latino Book Award. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant. She is a citizen of the Kwatsaan Nation and Laguna Pueblo and director of the MFA CW at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She recently won the Howard Foundation Award from Brown University for her novel-in-progress, All the Bones Have Fallen.

SJC One Book/One Community Committee

One Book/One Community is a common reading program and a high-impact practice. It brings the college and community together through a shared learning experience. The committee is planning activities and events that feature themes related to this year’s selection. We anticipate a year of powerful and interesting programming! All of our events are free and open to the public. We encourage you to join us!

The mission of SJC One Book/One Community is to promote campus and community dialogue and literacy through curriculum and events.