Maria O-Soza Short Story By Lynne M. Colombe March 2013 For living on the Reservation, she had a crazy name. Her mother didn't stick around long enough to explain why she had a Spanish name like Maria Catalina Francesca Ortega-Soza. She was the only kid who played basketball on a South Dakota reservation, whose first last name was just a big, "O," followed by a dash, and then, "Soza." She would have rather squeezed Whirling Wind Thunder into "WW-Thunder," than, "O-Soza" when playing the Pine Ridge Thorpes. Nonetheless, she grew up well with her mother's-aunt's-cousin, who had lost her own daughter near the time Maria needed a home at the age of two. That was twenty years ago, and now she was grown up, and changed her name to Maria Catherine Medicine, in honor of her foster mother who died three years prior. Maria had posted her name change in the local newspapers, but only her cousin had showed up at the court. Nobo...
Native American author, fictional and academic. Thoughts, philosophies, and interpretations from a Native Lakota Sioux Woman's Perspective.