Book Review: Canyon Dreams by Michael Powell
Basketball has achieved a following across the world and as Michael Powell illustrates in Canyon Dreams, the sport’s influence has managed to seep into the cultural fabric of the isolated and rugged terrain of the Navajo Nation in the American southwest. The book provides a snapshot of life on “the rez” through following a season with the Chinle High School basketball team. Though the basic premise of “a year with a high school team that has some interesting characteristic” is standard for the sports genre, Powell elevates above the mini-genre by taking more of a sociological approach to his subject. Canyon Dreams is really a nuanced and detailed depiction of Navajo Nation life, where understanding “rez ball” and the passion it inspires is essential to understanding Navajo life.
The central figure in Canyon Dreams is Raul Mendoza, Chinle’s septuagenarian and old-school coach who is equal parts mentor/surrogate father and basketball tactician. He’s certainly not the only high school basketball coach fitting that description, but what makes Mendoza especially compelling is that he has achieved this success largely through coaching undersized teams composed of athletes from local tribes. Not only do many of his players have to contend with alcoholism, drugs, and poverty impacting their families but they are also generally much smaller than their competition across the state.
Powell embedded himself in the Chinle community while writing the book and spends plenty of time with Mendova and gets to know everyone on the roster through extended interviews and home visits and accompanying the team on some of its interminable bus rides across the state. Basketball is hugely popular in the Navajo nation (Chinle has 4,500 residents but its basketball gymnasium accommodates 7,000 and is always packed with all members of the community during games), but Powell also profiles former Chinle players and the school’s valedictorian to shed light on the challenges that face those who leave the rez and the pressures many deal with to remain within the community even if there might be brighter prospects elsewhere. There are some long stretches of the book without any basketball action where Powell documents life on the rez, hiking its canyons, visiting the trailers and hogans where most residents live, and driving by the stretches of liquor stores that are pockmarked across its roads, and these were my favorite portions of the book. Chinle’s basketball exploits were reasonably entertaining and Powell writes about them well (though like many sportswriters he occasionally falls victim to some pretty weak and forced metaphors), but he really uses basketball as a springboard to explore greater Navajo culture, and this made Canyon Dreams a particularly engaging read for me.
Powell is a writer for the New York Times and his book reads much like an extended version of one of the paper’s Sports of the Times columns. This shouldn’t be surprising given the book developed out of a 2017 profile of Mendoza Powell wrote for the New York Times for that exact column. With its broad scope, there is definitely enough quality material to sustain a full book and there wasn’t any padding. Overall, Canyon Dreams is a fascinating look at a culture that will be unfamiliar to most readers and I’d expect it to end up as one of my favorite sports books from 2019.
8.5/10