Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Born in 1961, Deborah A. Miranda is the Thomas H. Broadus Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. She has authored or edited more than a half-dozen collections of essays and poems. Miranda is a member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, whose tribal history and identity is the subject of Bad Indians.

Miranda is both the author of Bad Indians and its central figure. The book’s autobiographical sections, which appear primarily in Part 4, describe Miranda’s experiences with traumatic violence in both childhood and adolescence, her transformative midlife awakening to lesbian love, and the forging of her Indigenous identity. In addition, Miranda includes original poems and other creative pieces that complement the book’s more traditional chronological structure.

The author’s father was Alfred Edward Miranda, Sr. (1927-2009). On both sides of his family, Al Miranda, Sr. was a direct descendant of the California “Mission Indians” and is the author’s sole connection to an Indigenous heritage. A rage-filled man with alcoholism and a propensity for violent outbursts, Al Miranda, Sr. served eight years in prison for a brutal rape.

Aside from the author, Al Miranda, Sr. is the most important figure in Bad Indians as well as its most ambivalent. On one hand, Miranda remembers a brief period of happiness while living under the same roof as her father.