In this debut poetry collection, Lakota storyteller Taté Walker steps into the role of a contemporary trickster to continue the purposefully disruptive legacy of a cultural icon: Iktómi, the Spider. The Trickster Riots weaves through the origins of a lost baby queer in love and spiritache to shapeshift into a momma spider exploring what it means to be a good relative, an obliterator of status quo, and a builder of community.

Walker’s provocative wordplay channels Iktómi with sometimes inharmonious examinations of Indigeneity. The poems weaponize (webonize?) the English language against colonial normativity and navigate the responsibilities of an urban Two Spirit writer carrying and empowering the next generations. Buckle up: The Trickster Riots journeys through fury and disaffection, libratic ceremony, and the lightning bolts of a struggling future ancestor.