Description
Book SynopsisCan it now be doubted that Native American/First Nations literary voice has become other than an established, and hugely compelling, compass? Native North American Authorship takes bearings, a roster of close readings yet situated within the wider latitudes and longitudes of timeline, place, memory. The emphasis falls throughout upon imagination, the breath within given texts be they fiction, poetry or self-writing. This is also to emphasize Native writing as modern (and in some cases postmodern) phenomenon, for sure rooted in tribal particularity, oral tradition, and trickster lore, but also given to reflexivity, the writer looking over his/her own shoulder. The authorship involved is now a literature equally of the city and indeed of geographies encountered beyond North America. The aim is to avoid suggesting some Grand Synthesis or to replay battles of reservation/off reservation ideology. The account opens with two purviews: the scale of Native written texts from early Ch
Trade Review
“With dazzling breadth and depth, A. Robert Lee analyzes a rich spectrum of Native voices, some well-known, others less often heard, placing them in a medley of illuminating contexts. He writes of all genres with agility, in his own inimitable critical idiom. This valuable book crowns Lee’s achievement in Native North American scholarship.” —Cathy Covell Waegner, editor, Mediating Indianness (2015)
“This brilliant and highly engaging collection of essays by A. Robert Lee is the perfect companion for readers of Native North American poetry and prose who wish to go deeper: to discover, through close attention to text, ways in which each author’s biographical and sociocultural influences have informed their own writings, and ways in which these writings have, collectively, shaped the various literary trends which contextualize them. The result of Lee’s deft cross-referencing is a breathtaking tour-de-force.” —Ingrid Wendt, author of Evensong (2011)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Introduction: Text, Breath, Modernity – Native American Renaissance: Timelines, Texts – Modern Native Life Writing: Telling You Now – Wordwalker: N. Scott Momaday Tryptich – The Full House in Her Hand: Leslie Marmon Silko – Web and House: Later Erdrich, Earlier Erdrich – Cross-Worlds: The Sight and Sound of James Welch – Storier: Postindian Trajectory in the Novels of Gerald Vizenor – Fiction Off and On Center: Sherman Alexie – Memory Theatre: The Fictions of Louis Owens – Changing Points of Compass: The Novel 1990s-2020s – Story Panorama: Anthology, Author Collection – Whole Parts: Scripting Diane Glancy’s ShortFiction – Dark Illumination: The Noir Story Collections of Stephen Graham Jones– Poetry Remembrance: Joy Harjo, Wendy Rose, Diane Glancy, Luci Tapahonso, Kimberly Blaeser – A Native Sense of Existence: The Poetries of Simon Ortiz, Ray A. Young Bear, Tommy Pico – Oklahoma International: Jim Barnes and the Sites of Imagination – Two Handed: Self and Habitat in the Poetry of Linda Hogan – Electronic Computer and Stub Pencil: The Writing-in of Ralph Salisbury – Epilogue: Native, North American, Authorship – About the Author – Index.
