A tribute to the Chinese artist's ambitious, internationally celebrated work.

With a female dominated first name, Dana desperately wants to be a man or at least on the road to becoming a man. This, the book begins where the last left off, with Dana, at age thirteen, living in Idaho and working at an egg factory. Among his responsibilities is the removal of dead hens from the hundreds of pens. Without a mask, the stench is overwhelming, and the long-dead, horribly disfigured chicken flesh that he handles makes him want to gag but this is the price of normality and an escape from a childhood of extremes. The family moves from an idyllic setting along the Clearwater River in the mountains of Idaho to the Pine forested lakes of Minnesota before ending up in a trailer park void of vegetation, in the badlands of western North Dakota. The area is brown and without trees and the wind is constant, blowing dust and tumbleweeds from one end of the state to the next. Dana's feels trapped in a nightmare his sophomore year of high school. Distraught, Dana walks along the road, searching for a way out of this situation. By chance, his eyes catch a discarded cassette tape in the ditch. It's labeled, "Kraftwerk, The Man Machine." Mesmerized by the computerized music, it lifts his spirits and soon takes him to a new way of thinking. For the first time in his life, he decides not to blend in but to recreate himself the way he wants to be which is vastly different from the way he was. Dana loves martial arts movies and purchases a manual called, "Dim Mak; The Finger Death Touch," blowguns, throwing stars, throwing knives, nunchakus and tonfa becoming a secret, small town ninja. 1983 brings cable and MTV, parachute pants, Prince and Duran Duran to the badlands of western North Dakota. When Dana watches Michael Jackson moonwalk for the first time on a Motown special, it ignites an obsession. Dana learns to breakdance and dates a tall, foreign exchange student from New Zealand with large hands and an unusual sense of humor.Colorful characters abound including Killer, the one man Dana's afraid to break dance around, his uncle John who attempted suicide with a shotgun but lived and now values Dr. Pepper nearly as much as money and a monstrous man who resembles Tweety with a golden mullet who shatters the glass door of Bitchin Bob's Bar at 1am as Dana and his friends grab a bite to eat.This coming-of-age story is written with humorous perspective and chronicles Dana's teen years from 1980-1985. Just a Small Town Ninja is so full of adventure, humor and quirky teenage situations that it seems impossible to be true.

Dana is a boy with a girl's name, born in Minnesota to parents that some may label, "Christian Fundamentalists" or "Holy Rollers." He is the oldest of six children, his father fighting in Viet Nam at the time of his birth. From an early age Dana's driven to be first and to be the best which is especially frustrating as he's slow to develop physically. Among the shortest kids in his classrooms throughout the elementary and middle school years, when his friends are sprouting hair all over their bodies, he is the lone, hairless wonder. He goes to great lengths to remedy this situation with horrific results including the decision to glue blonde hair on his chest from his sister's doll before school one day. With his father's refusal to live in or near a major city where the majority of jobs can be found, the family lives at or below the poverty line, considering unique living accommodations. At one time they consider living in an Amish community or becoming migrant fruit pickers. Instead they move to the mountains of Idaho and live in a canvass tent for some time before moving into an Indian Museum. Living in an ever-nomadic family, Dana's constantly changing schools and leaving friends. It's difficult for Dana to come to grips with the fact that he can't listen to the same music or watch the same TV shows or even go to trick-or-treating like his friends. More than anything, Dana just wants to be normal but he knows his life is anything but normal. Dana kills the first rattlesnake he encountered the summer between second and third grade. He faces rattlesnakes throughout his childhood in the forms of poverty, embarrassment, a boy who wants to kill him named Israel, his cousin Mack, a rigid religious upbringing, constant change and the ever-present fear of the apocalypse/rapture. This first book documents Dana's coming of age story from birth to the end of the world in 1980, his family on the top of a mountain with blowing trumpets to usher in the rapture on New Year's Eve. Dana who just turned 13 desperately wants to kiss a girl before the world ends. This memoir is written with Dana's unique (comedic) perspective and is full of colorful characters, adventure, love, laughs and situations that most people could never imagine! What happens when you mix Native Americans, hippies and evangelicals in the wilderness of Idaho and frozen tundra of Minnesota? I, Dana, Killed a Rattlesnake.

SUITABLE FOR ALL SKILL LEVELS