Hannah Chong Mrs. La Fleur ELA 8 PAP, period 5 May 11, 2018 THINK OF TITLE! Navajos. Who were the Navajos and what is their importance? Navajos were Native Americans, discriminated because of their skin color before and after World War 2. However, they were very crucial to the war. Joseph Bruchac was a Navajo himself and didn’t fight in the war, but he may have felt the same pain as those before and after the war. He wrote a book called Code Talker to tell people about the struggles and the war that the Navajos had to face. Joseph Bruchac's cultural background affected how he wrote the novel. Joseph Bruchac was born on October 16, 1942 in Saratoga Springs, New York. He grew up in Greenfield Center, New York, raised by his grandparents from his mom's side. Abenaki is his tribal heritage and he and his family try to preserve this culture. He wrote a variety of genres such as fiction and poetry. He mainly wrote about the problems about being an American. He went to Africa and saw the suffering the people in Africa were going through and how much we Americans were taking for granted. "He has a B.A. in Cornell …show more content…
Because he was born during WWII, he was curious and wanted to learn about the war. His uncle, Jimmy James Smith Jr, was a Navajo marine and his aunt was an army nurse during the war. "The conversations I've had with Uncle Jim about his experiences in the war and the information he shared with me helped me understand what it was like on those grim and distant islands where the Marine Corps was the first to land. His uncle saw the code talkers as important people and never knew what they did until after the war." (Bruchac 219). To write this book, he went through years of research and research and finally published it. Because he was a Navajo and because his family was involved with the war, he grew to understand it and saw interest in it to write this