Non-Belonging and Forging Individual Identity Theme Analysis

In “Future Home of the Living God,” the narrator, Cedar Hawk Songmaker, grapples with a sense of her own identity. Descended from a working-class Native American mother and adopted by wealthy white liberal parents, Cedar has a sense of being caught between worlds and identities, unable to locate herself fully in either one of them. Through navigating her complicated heritage, Cedar is able to forge an individual identity not based on fitting in with one specific group, but on picking and choosing what to keep of her heritage and what to leave behind.

Cedar lacks connection to her cultural roots. Her birth family is indigenous, and while her white adoptive parents, Sera and Alan, try to connect her with this heritage, their efforts are superficial and ultimately render her disconnected from her ethnicity. When Cedar is in the doctor’s office, the nurse asks if she got her name from “her tribe.” Cedar responds, saying, “My Indian name is Mary Potts.” This exchange is ironic; even though Cedar is truly descended from an indigenous family, the name the nurse mistook to be “tribal” comes instead from her white adoptive parents, who are “Minnesota liberals,” while the name Mary comes from Cedar’s indigenous birth mother, who is also named Mary, along with her own mother and her second daughter. Cedar’s adoptive parents, while they may have been trying to honor Cedar’s heritage with her name, have not represented indigenous lineage in the same way Cedar’s birth mother, who actually form part of that culture, has chosen to. This makes Cedar only partially connected to this part of her ancestry, fully belonging neither to indigenous culture nor to white, liberal culture. Cedar also references her adoptive parents’ superficial engagement with indigenous ritual and tradition. While she was growing up, her adoptive mother invited her to participate in “many self-invented ceremonies” loosely based on indigenous culture. Although Cedar says that participating in these rituals are some “of the best memories of [her] life,” she adds that this was all “before she disappointed” her adoptive parents. Cedar implies that while these rituals were fun when she was younger, they did not provide her with a sustainable source of support or even connection to her family, as traditions deeply rooted in a family’s shared cultural background might.

Cedar’s adoptive and birth families also come from very different class backgrounds, and she is unable to locate herself within either group. One of the reasons Cedar’s birth mother, Mary Potts Almost Senior, chose to give her up is that she didn’t feel able to provide for a baby. She says she gave Cedar to “a good family, rich as hell,” highlighting her desire for her daughter to have access to class privileges beyond what she can provide. Of course, Cedar’s adoptive parents have given away their money to “causes now defunct” and are no longer “rich as hell” which perhaps has to do with Cedar’s inability to fit in with extremely privileged circle. However, Cedar seems not to fit into the mold of a young adult raised by a white, liberal, upper-middle class family, either. Cedar mentions several times that she has disappointed her adoptive parents. She never states exactly why but does mention offhand in the beginning of the story that “all of her friends were in jail, or dead.” This is not at all typical of people who run in wealthy, privileged social circles, and implies that Cedar may have been involved in illicit activity, particularly drug use. Although it is never clear whether Cedar abused drugs, if she were to have, she would have engaged with exactly the type of behavior her birth mother hoped to protect her from by giving her to a wealthier family. Even if not, she clearly has not taken advantage of the opportunities that class privilege could have offered her. Finally, Cedar also feels uncomfortable in the context of her birth family. When she meets her younger sister, Little Mary, Cedar feels “glad that [she] didn’t have this mother and family” and “thinks of Alan and Sera and all that [they] share.” That she immediately thinks this after observing the way she could have “turned out” had she stayed in this family and class background reveals that she is uncomfortable in these circumstances, and grateful for the privilege that she has.

Ultimately, Cedar must develop an individual identity that draws from her various backgrounds without embracing all aspects of them. Because neither background can fully represent her, she must pick and choose what aspects of her lineage she will allow to form meaningful parts of her identity moving forward. In the same moment that she thinks to herself that she’s glad not to have grown up around her birth family, Cedar adds “except maybe this grandmother,” referring to Mary Potts the Very Senior. This is the first clear instance in the story of her willfully wishing to integrate some aspects of her birth family into her identity. The fact that she picks only the grandmother illustrates the selective way in which Cedar goes about constructing her identity—she isn’t obliged to fully embrace either family, but chooses what she wants to keep. Additionally, in the last scene of the story, when Cedar is sorting through her younger sister’s messy room, Little Mary asks Cedar what she will name her baby. Cedar holds up a “swatch of red boy-leg lace and [reads] the label,” and then says “Victoria.” The implication that Cedar read the name off of Little Mary’s clothing is significant—it is through digging through the mess of her past that she will forge her future and what she will pass down to her child. Her choice of name is an act of individual decision-making, but it is still contextualized within family. The fact that the name itself is Victoria—and not Mary, the name of three generations of women in Cedar’s birth family—also represents an overcoming. Cedar’s “victory” will be emerging from the mess of tangled family relationships with a fully formed individual identity.