Written from a contemporary Cherokee, Queer, and mixed-race experience, Walking with Ghosts: Poems confronts the legacy of land-theft, genocide, and forced removal of Cherokees from their homelands while simultaneously resisting ongoing attacks on both Indigenous and Gay/ Lesbian/ Bisexual /Transgender (GLBT) communities. The debut work of Qwo-Li Driskill, a young Cherokee poet also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ancestries, these poems move across Cherokee history. From the infamous Trail of Tears and the Allotment Act to the Indian boarding school system and contemporary manifestations of racism, these poems reach into Cherokee collective memory asking its readers to not only remember the history of colonization, but also the survival and continuance of Indigenous Nations. With this collection Driskill, who identifies as Queer as well as Two-Spirit (a contemporary term used in North American Indigenous communities to describe diverse sexual and gender identities) becomes one of only a few of American Indian Queer/Two-Spirit male writers in print. Refusing to compromise identities, Driskill also grapples with the impact of hate crimes on GLBT communities, multiracial and multi-tribal identity, the AIDS crisis, psychic trauma, and war. Yet the poems in this collection are rooted in a sense of love and the power of words to heal the legacies of colonization and other forms of violence. Cherokee love poems weave into eulogies to the dead while ghosts draw the living into a place of wholeness. Tender, startling, confrontational and erotic, this book honors the dead and brings the survivors back home.

At the Queer Conference Dinner I looked into your dark eyes with shock when you asked me if I could do a traditional Indian dance to entertain these mostly white faces All these white faces except yours and a few others I could count on one hand and I spit out the word NO like a rock hoping its sound falling to the floor would wake you up from all these lies they've fed us It didn't I left the room to stand in the parking lot and smoke Brother How angry I was for being angry with you Your young Azteca body shrouded in the expensive business clothes white men wear when they write out contracts to sell our grandmothers' hearts I know you are pleading only to stay alive and One day I will dance for you It will be my prayer that you come home