"While intersectionality operates at the systemic level, showing how systems confront individuals, literature operates at the individual level, showing how individuals confront systems. Native American literary works like Watermelon Nights challenge expectations about individuality, systems, and even what is meant by confrontation. To be true to his characters, Sarris offers none of the consolations of a showdown, a hero's journey, or a happily ever after. He offers the stories of a people who lived here, took care of the land, told stories, and remain here, often overlooked even as their land is "acknowledged." Watermelon Nights is an important American novel and an increasingly relevant work for resisting a political and cultural economy that privileges protest and encourages forgetting for the sake of belonging."–-Los Angles Review of Books