Terria Smith in conversation with Weshoyot Alvitre at Bart’s Books
From a celebrated Native journalist, an electrifying memoir of travel, love, friendships, and connection across cultures.
Growing up on the Torres Martinez Reservation in Southern California, Terria Smith longed for adventure. She became a journalist, hitting the road and reporting on the rich lives of Native people around the United States. As her hunger for travel grew, so did her understanding of community, and what it means to be a world citizen today. I Love You So Many—named after a favorite expression of her Spanish-speaking relatives—follows Smith from her ancestral homelands to Cuba, Iceland, Guyana, and back again. With exuberant, laugh-out-loud style she tells stories about forging profound friendships, falling in and out of love, and celebrating the determination that carried her through hard and heady times alike. She brings a fresh sensibility to travel writing, building enduring relationships with the people and cultures she visits. For Smith, travel is deeply rooted in Native traditions: It’s about sharing, reciprocity, risk-taking, and the valuable (and sometimes awkward) work of bridging and holding differences. As fun as it is poignant, I Love You So Many is an irresistible tribute to getting out and living a life in full.
I Love You So Many is an Indigenous memoir that chronicles Terria Smith’s journey of self-discovery and acceptance through global travel, relationality, and family history. Moving from Alaska to Cuba, Iceland, Guyana, and beyond, Smith explores themes of Indigenous identity, resilience, and love while navigating personal challenges like divorce, migration, and loss. Embedded in a beautifully chronicled travelogue of her unfolding life—her unflinching truths become touchstones, illuminated and validated with each stamp on her passport. Joining the ranks of Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians and Therese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, this memoir celebrates healing, empowerment, and the enduring strength of Indigenous mobility in an accessible and interconnected world.”— Theresa Gregor, Professor of American Indian Studies, California State University-Long Beach
“Terria Smith has gifted us something we don’t see so much of: a Native travel narrative that is more than just the fish-out-of-water, “Indian leaves the rez and is overwhelmed” trope. I can almost hear the gasps of readers marveling at the idea that Indians travel at all! Smith is a wonderful guide in showing that we absolutely do, and that our experiences at home provide us insights beyond what most American travelers may bring with them when they go abroad. At the core of this quarter-century unfolding is Smith’s personal origin story as a mighty, independent Indigenous woman with a deep love for her traditional land finding her power in a broader, borderless world; in worlds, really, both inner and outer varieties of them. Smith’s journey is full of heart and humor, and a different version of Native memoir from what we usually get and I am grateful for the opportunity to travel with her.” — Chris La Tray, author of Becoming Little Shell
“This book is like a letter from your best friend telling you what really happened during her trip.” — Ursula Pike, author of An Indian Among Los Indígenas
“Smith beautifully weaves together stories from her life as a Desert Cahuilla woman on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation in the Coachella Valley desert, with her travels as an engaged and intrepid traveler who represents her deep, desert-based indigenous roots while also seeking to engage and learn and connect with indigenous people and cultures everywhere she goes. Please read this book. It is a journey you need to travel along with, learn from, and celebrate with, and your life will be all the much richer for it.” — Ruth Nolan, editor of No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California’s Deserts
Terria Smith is a tribal member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and a proud original Californian. She is the editor of News from Native California magazine and director of the Berkeley Roundhouse, Heyday’s California Indian publishing program. Smith is also the editor of the 2023 anthology Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance. She received her undergraduate degree at Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University) and earned her master’s degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She lives on her ancestral homelands in the Coachella Valley with her puppy Havana.
Weshoyot Alvitre is a Tongva and Scottish comic book artist, writer and illustrator. She was born in the Santa Monica Mountains on the property of Satwiwa, a cultural center started by her father Art Alvitre. She grew up close to the land and raised with traditional knowledge that inspires the work she does today. Weshoyot has been working in the comics medium for over 15 years. Her work focuses on art and writing that visualizes historical material through an Indigenous lens. She has also contributed art response to contemporary Indigenous issues using pop-culture, sci-fi and archival research materials to spark conversations and re-frame colonial narratives. Her work has been featured in the anthologies of Moonshot Volumes 2 and 3, Deerwoman: An anthology, Imminent Cuisine the Zine, and Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices. Alvitre has also received numerous awards for her childrens book illustrations in 'At The Mountains Base' (Kokila 2019) and 'Living Ghosts & Mischeivous Monsters' (Scholastic 2021). Alvitre’s current projects 'Toypurina: Our Lady of Sorrows' and 'Lone' focus on the re-telling of stories from her own tribal community, using historical fact, primary accounts and tribal knowledge to provide fuller representation of those from her Tongva history. Alvitre has made a conscious choice to work primarily within Native-owned publications and educational avenues, to further support a self-funded narrative on past, present and future native issues. It is through this voice, and through her artwork, she feels she is able to communicate her unique viewpoint and continue a strong dialogue on issues that are important to her as a Native woman.