Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living inTwoWorlds By Diana Myers Bahr University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 211 pages. $29.95 cloth. Reviewed byAlanna Kathleen Brown Montana State University-Bozeman VIOLA MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA PAIUTE IS an engagingwork, first becauseMartinez's life is so interestingand second because thewriter, Diana Meyers Bahr, is consciously working on the evolution of an autobiography/biography format that isbiculturally sensitive.The key to both the format and Martinez's life lies in the subtitle,Living inTwoWorlds. Let us begin with Bahr's choices to contextualize and forefront Viola Martinez's voice. As a project associate for theOral History Program at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, Bahr is aware that oral representations carry lessweight than the written record inEuro-American culture. She is also aware thatthe written record can solidifythe flimsy and the careless, and thatboth oral and written formsof communication have inherent flaws and essentialworth. Bahr chooses to forefront Martinez's voice and perceptions while drawing extensively on historical records and photography, her own as well as others', to adhere a life to a place and time. She also includes a "literature review," an addendum that discusses fourteen collabora tions on twentieth-century Native women's lives, summarizing key elements of those women's storieswhile discussing theapproaches of other editors to illustrate the difficultiesof doing bi culturalwork. For Bahr, what matters most is communicating thevitality and understanding of thekey figure. She also insistson theneed to differentiate the collaborator from the subject in thepresentation of thematerial. Such work brings at leasttwoperspectives toa life, andmore ifother interviewees are included. To readViola Martinez is to see the cutting edge of an evolv ingformasworks in cultural studies,American pluralism, and feminist theory,affects thepre sentation ofmultiethnic lifereflections. The primary reason to read this text is the fascinating lifeofViola Martinez herself.Mar tinezdoes carefullynote that"these are not just my childhood memories but also recollections ofwhat people have toldme" (p. 4). Those with tribal consciousness always speak to represent their communities. While theywill point out tragicparadoxes, theytelltheirstorieson behalf of thosewho constantlyface the threatof erasure by Euro-American culture. Born in 1917, the tenthchildof amother who died inthe infamous 1918influenza epidemic,Martinez was raised by hermother's sister in traditionalways but also in extreme poverty. Her uncles decided to sendMartinez, at age ten, to the Sherman Institute Federal Indian Boarding School inRiverside, California. Chap ter3 isfilledwith anecdotes about being pun ished forspeaking her language and shamed for being Indian, training as a domestic servant, and being indoctrinated intoChristianity. The real horror inher storyisthe theft of Indian children eitherphysically,aswhen tourists just took away her beautiful sister, Alice, or psychologically, as when Martinez discovered that "she no longer quite fitin Owens Valley, nor did shefitcomfort ably inRiverside. Shewas on the margin of each society,partly in and partly out" (p. 67). Martinez's response was to master English, tobe one of thefirstthree Indian girls to request entrance intoRiverside PolytechnicHigh School, to go on to junior college, and ultimately to achieve a teaching credentialfrom Santa Barbara StateCollege in 1939,an amazing lifetrajectory for an Indian of that time. Fiftyyears later,as Bahr points out, only sixtyout of one hundred Indian students complete high school, and only i64 OHQ vol. 106, no. 1 threeout of one hundred Indians achieve a col legedegree. Martinez's adult life has been justas surpris ing. In 1940, allotments opened up forPaiutes inOwens Valley, and Martinez returnedwith her sisterand went into social servicework be cause "thepeople don'twant an Indian teaching white students" (p. 87). In the face of ongoing racism, Martinez became an office manager for the Indian Field Service Agency, managed a housing project for theDepartment of Labor with white workers under her supervision, and became a counselor at the Japanese Internment Camp atManzanar. Martinez's comments on the similaritiesbetween theBIA-run Indian schools and the Japanese intermentcamps of World War II aswell as Bahr's informativehistorical com mentary insightfullyexpose the interlinkingof race policies inAmerica. After raising her children, Martinez did become a teacher in 1968. She was an innovator in culturally pluralistic teachingmethods, and became a driving forcewithin theAmerican Indian Education Commission and theNative American Ministry of Southern California for the Presbyterian Church...