Modesto 209 Choctaw Author of strawberry wine with cherry inheritance of wings little history onbook

Описание: Personal & Artistic Statement | Carissa Horton (Caricia Rose)
Halito,
My name is Carissa Horton, also known professionally and artistically as Caricia Rose. I am currently pursuing higher education at Dickinson State University, with a primary focus in the medical field (2025), while continuing my work as an author, artist, and performer. My artistic expression moves through many forms, including makeup, hair, nails, bakery and food decoration, photography, digital art, writing, poetry, singing, and performance. There is no end to my creativity it exists as one continuous expression across disciplines, mediums, and lived experience. My presence spans multiple platforms, where I share work rooted in ancestry, survival, and truth telling.

I am a proud member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, i’m from Modesto, California southside .O.G and I am a recognized Choctaw artist, an honor I hold with deep respect and gratitude. I am also the author of Strawberry Wine with Cherry Inheritance of Wings, a memoir that confronts generational trauma, survival, and inherited silence. My book is based directly on my biological family and serves as a living example of what happened to many Native American families how genocide evolved into displacement, how displacement became silence, and how that silence turned into internalized oppression, addiction, family violence, and generational breakdown. It documents the real, lived outcome of colonization inside a single family line, showing how harm is passed down when it is never named or healed this books purpose is to help survivors understand Why behind they're pain

My book is not light reading it is raw, graphic, and honest. I often say it should only be read during daylight hours, because it does not look away from the truth. One of the most powerful quotes in my book reads:

“I’ve stared at that bottle of pills too, thinking how simple it would be to end the noise. And then it hit me this is what my mother faced except she numbed the pain. I faced it.”

I grew up in 40 foster homes and three group homes. Much of my childhood and adolescence were spent surviving systems that were not built to protect me. I later came to North Dakota under the promise of reconnecting with family and rebuilding what I believed had been healed. Instead, I became what my book names clearly the scapegoat and the target. Shortly after arriving, I was treated with hostility and cruelty, ultimately left alone in the state while my family actively worked to tear me down.
My experiences within my family were shaped by internalized oppression the passing down of racialized harm within one’s own bloodline. Although my skin is light, my dark hair and dark eyes marked me as “other.” I was not considered “white enough,” and my Native identity became a source of punishment rather than pride. Internalized oppression means that the violence of colonization does not end it turns inward, manifesting as racial slurs, exclusion, and abuse within families themselves.

When my family’s actions began to jeopardize my children, I was forced to confront a devastating truth the same harm had been done to my mother’s child before me only that time, they succeeded. That is when I understood that what I was experiencing was inherited. This pain did not begin with me it traveled through generations.

That night, after long reflection, I experienced what my people would call an ancestral vision what others might call a dream. In that vision, I was told that my path would be walked through fire and pain not as punishment, but as preparation. That one day, I would feed the people with what I learned. That vision is what led me to write Strawberry Wine with Cherry Inheritance of Wings.

Being a Choctaw literary and performance artist is one of the greatest honors of my life. It is something I will never take lightly or take for granted.
After graduation, my goals are to secure meaningful employment, continue my education, and expand my work as a writer and artist. My life’s work is about survival, truth, and using lived experience to create something that matters for my children, my people, and those who see themselves in my story.
When I was 13 years old, I was kicked out and left to survive on my own. I slept in the alley on Crockett Avenue in Modesto, California. During that time, I encountered people society often looks away from people who sold their bodies to survive, people caught in addiction, people living within gang-controlled streets. And yet, those same people never let me in. They pushed me away not out of cruelty, but protection. They told me I did not belong there. They said there was more for me. They said there was a light around me, and they did not want that light swallowed by the streets. They told me to leave, to live, to go somewhere else because my life was meant for something different.
I want this said clearly those words mattered.
Yakoke. Carissa Horton
A.K.A Caricia Rose