A unique experience awaits readers of Miracle Hill, the autobiography of Blackhorse Mitchell, nicknamed “Barney” a young Navaho boy who began his own story as an assignment in his twelfth grade English class in the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts under the tutelage of Terry D. Allen. Unlike the other students in the class, who finished their life stories in half an hour or so, Barney found that he had a whole book stored up inside him, just waiting to be put on paper But Barney was still in the process of learning English as a second language, and so his manuscript was full of errors; Allen decided, however, that correcting the manuscript would result in less communication of Barney’s colorful world view, in a less authentic transmission of his personality. So although she is listed as co-author, Allen did a miminum [minimum] of editing and asks the reader to ”hang loose and let Barney\u27s honest emotion flow through, despite his violation of conventional rules of grammar and spelling
