Search results for ""Author Linda Ray Pratt""

Great Plains Literature is an exploration of influential literature of the Plains region in both the United States and Canada. It reflects the destruction of the culture of the first people who lived there, the attempts of settlers to conquer the land, and the tragic losses and successes of settlement that are still shaping our modern world of environmental threat, ethnic and racial hostilities, declining rural communities, and growing urban populations. In addition to featuring writers such as Ole Edvart Rölvaag, Willa Cather, and John Neihardt, who address the epic stories of the past, Great Plains Literature also includes contemporary writers such as Louis Erdrich, Kent Haruf, Ted Kooser, Rilla Askew, N. Scott Momaday, and Margaret Laurence. This literature encompasses a history of courage and violence, aggrandizement and aggression, triumph and terror. It can help readers understand better how today’s threats to the environment, clashes with Native people, struggling small towns, and rural migration to the cities reflect the same forces that were important in the past.

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Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbrook family in the late 1920s and the Great Depression as they move from the coal mines of Wyoming to a tenant farm in western Nebraska, ending up finally on the kill floors of the slaughterhouses and in the wretched neighborhoods of the poor in Omaha, Nebraska.Mazie, the oldest daughter in the growing family of Jim and Anna Holbrook, tells the story of the family's desire for a better life Anna's dream that her children be educated and Jim's wish for a life lived out in the open, away from the darkness and danger of the mines. At every turn in their journey, however, their dreams are frustrated, and the family is jeopardized by cruel and indifferent systems.

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