I can tell everything is about to go bad but something that's been weighing on my mind is the choice of the Coliseum for the climax. Like yes it's a big venue in CA and makes sense, but it carries so much weight at the same time. The name is an attempt to emulate the "glory" of the Roman Colosseum, a place where enslaved people and animals suffered and fought and died to entertain the masses. Now we have this modern powwow taking place in the American imitation of the Colosseum, where Native people are coming together for something positive. Instead of performing for a bloodthirsty audience they are performing for themselves, for each other, and the people before them whose traditions were oppressed and attacked. And yet these people are going to suffer the result of more senseless violence, more bloodshed, and more pain on a day that is supposed to be one for joy and community. There is just so much to analyze about the glorification of violence, genocide, and attempted erasure in this book. Just the term "Coliseum" is enough to invoke images of an arena packed with screaming crowds and young men fighting for their lives, and the same thing is about to happen in the next few chapters. All because the world that these characters are forced to live in was built with their suffering and erasure in mind, and because these cycles of abuse and addiction and poverty have been perpetuated in the name of imperialism and violence. This is turning into an essay but. Yeah. I don't read literary fiction as much as I'd like to but this book just has me wanting to dig into the text and uncover all of its layers and intricacies. Everything is coming together and I'm not ready for the crescendo of pain that's about to happen 😭 I hope my thoughts are actually coherent bc this just has my brain whirring too fast to articulate myself correctly