Shonda Buchanan

Shonda Buchanan (born 1968) is an American poet, memoirist, and academic whose work centers on race, identity, migration, and the intersections of African American and Native American experience. She is an associate professor of English at Western Michigan University, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, and is on the MFA faculty at Alma College.^[1] She is also the founding literary editor of Harriet Tubman Press and a consulting curator poet for The Broad.^[2]

Buchanan's memoir Black Indian (2019), published by Wayne State University Press, received the 2020 Indie New Generation Book Award and was included on the PBS NewsHour list of recommended reading on institutional racism.^[3] It was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus Reviews, and Foreword, and was a finalist for the 2024 American Legacy Book Awards.^[4]

Buchanan was born in 1968 on North Edwards Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and grew up on the city's Northside and Eastside.^[5] Her biography states that she descends from African (Mende), Coharie, Choctaw, Eastern Band Cherokee, and European ancestors.^[2] When she was 8, her family moved to a farm in Mattawan; she returned to Kalamazoo at 16 to attend Kalamazoo Central High School.^[5]

Buchanan earned a BA in English (1997) and an MA in English (2003) from Loyola Marymount University, and an MFA in Creative Writing (2010) from Antioch University.^[1]

Buchanan has taught creative writing, American literature, and BIPOC literature for over two decades. Before joining Western Michigan University, she held positions at Loyola Marymount University, California State University, Northridge, and Hampton University.^[1][2] She is an associate professor of English at Western Michigan University and a faculty member in the MFA program at Alma College.^[1]

Buchanan has worked as a journalist for over 25 years, with work published in the Los Angeles Times, Indian Country Today, The International Review of African American Art, and AWP's The Writer's Chronicle.^[2] She is the founding literary editor of Harriet Tubman Press, which publishes books by and about African Americans.^[2]

Buchanan's memoir Black Indian was published by Wayne State University Press in August 2019 as part of the Made in Michigan Writers Series.^[6] The 320-page book traces her family's multiracial history across six generations, documenting the hidden histories of families with mixed African American and Native American ancestry.^[6] In a 2019 interview with The Rumpus, Buchanan described the memoir as "a prayer for my family" that took ten years to write.^[7]

• Who's Afraid of Black Indians? (Poetica Publishing, 2012) — nominated for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award and the Library of Virginia Book Awards^[2]
• Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country (San Francisco Bay Press, 2017; ISBN 978-0-9968350-5-3)
• The Lost Songs of Nina Simone (RIZE Press/Running Wild Press, May 2025; ISBN 978-1-960018-98-4) — a poetry collection exploring the life and legacy of Nina Simone^[8][5]

Black Indian received attention from several national review outlets. Kirkus Reviews called it "a unique account of the damage inflicted on blacks and Native Americans in the late 1800s" and noted that Buchanan "tackles her difficulties with humor," while observing that the writing was strongest when examining how federal policies fractured her sense of identity.^[9]

Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eisa Nefertari Ulen described the book as "a quintessentially American narrative" and praised Buchanan for deconstructing the "black-white binary" through documentation of mixed-race ancestry rendered invisible in official records.^[10] Karl Helicher, reviewing for Foreword, gave the memoir five stars and wrote that it was "an emotionally draining memoir that is also resonant in its discussions of poverty's destructive forces."^[11]

The Hawaiʻi Review of Books conducted an interview about the memoir, and an American Library Association review described it as a "grimly haunting memoir" that "reveals many aspects of American racism and sexism."^[12] Academic analysis of the work includes a 2021 University of Michigan doctoral dissertation examining Indigenous subjectivity in contemporary memoir, which situates Black Indian within a broader tradition of Native American life writing.^[13]

• 2020 Indie New Generation Book Award, for Black Indian^[6]
• 2024 American Legacy Book Awards finalist (Autobiography/Memoir), for Black Indian^[4]
• PBS NewsHour "Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism" (2020)^[3]
• Three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee^[5]
• PEN America Emerging Voices fellow^[2]
• Sundance Institute Writing Arts fellow^[2]
• California Arts Council fellow^[2]
• Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs fellow^[1]
• Jentel Artist Residency fellow^[2]
• Oxfam Ambassador^[1]

• Official website
• Shonda Buchanan at the Poetry Foundation
• Black Indian at Wayne State University Press
• Faculty profile at Western Michigan University