Wordsri | Author Profile

- Author

Kathy de Cano

About the Author

As soon as I was able to read, I began to write. Throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, poetry was one of the things that sustained me and also connected me to people I found interesting. Several of my poems have been published, both in Spanish and in English, in various publications. A few of my essays have been featured in "The Smoky Mountain News" newspaper, and I contributed as a book reviewer for "The Cherokee One Feather" newspaper for several years. Though born in Kentucky, I've lived or studied in such diverse places as Barranquilla, Colombia, Los Angeles, Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Spain, the mountains of North Carolina, and Georgia, where I now reside. Travel is one of my passions, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin America, but I still have a long bucket list in need of check marks. My journeys abroad and my work as a teacher have had a huge influence on both my writing and my painting, an additional creative pursuit that I indulge in frequently. Most of my career in education was in the role of a Spanish teacher, at one time even on The Learning Channel. I also co-taught with a fluent speaker in the Cherokee language program at my school in the mountains of North Carolina after obtaining a graduate certificate in Cherokee Studies from Western Carolina University and taking community classes in the Cherokee language, which I continue to study. Thankfully, my former colleague in this endeavor, Mary Brown, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, worked as an editor on the first two novels I published here. I am a Cherokee descendant, a 5th great-grand niece of Chief Yonaguska, and a 4th great-granddaughter of Rebecca Naka Katadihi Morris, who is commemorated on the Women's History Trail at the Nikwasi Mound in Franklin, North Carolina. As such, programs that maintain the Cherokee language are important to me, which is why half of my royalties go to programs that do just that. I am retired from teaching now and dedicate myself to painting, writing, traveling, learning, and spending time with friends, my two daughters, my son-in-law, and my two granddaughters. The Blue Cloud Series novels are my first two. My visual art can be viewed at https://www.artpal.com/kdecano.

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- Books

Under Blue Cloud Skies: The Sequel to Coming to Her Senses

$18

In this sequel to Coming to Her Senses: A Coming-of-Age Novel, the Blue Clouds, a Cherokee family living in the mountains of North Carolina in the early nineteen-seventies, must come to terms with the cultural clashes that often accompany mixed marriages, the influences of the counterculture reshaping the lives and values of the youth of their time, and the desire to maintain their language against formidable odds. A legacy of intergenerational trauma, the tensions of younger family members coping with unplanned parenthood, and the perils of religious fanaticism, particularly when its seeds are sown in an unstable mind, all come to bear in this novel about the power and lessons of love, the fruits of forgiveness, the rewards of resiliency, and ultimately, the capacity of the human spirit to prevail.

Coming to Her Senses: A Coming-of-Age Novel

$18

The summer of 1970, Janet Johnson was best known to her peers as an introverted poetess. Raised in the mountains of western North Carolina by parents whose religion taught fear and shame, Janet had buried herself in books and her writing, occasionally coming up for air to spend time with her fearless friend Shirley. All of that was about to change. Her relationship with Anthony Blue Cloud, a young Cherokee artist whose parents had returned to the mountains after raising him in upstate New York, turned her world upside down as the two navigated prejudices, becoming young adults together, and the twists and turns of challenging the status quo and threatening small town hypocrisies. Enduring violence, alienation, and heartbreaks, together they master lessons of resilience and fortitude rarely learned on more familiar paths. From her entrance into Anthony's world, delving into the Cherokee language and culture, to her escape onto the streets of Mexico City's sprawling metropolis and return back home again, Janet's sense of identity is shaped and transformed in ways previously unimaginable to her.