Haa Shuká. Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives ed. by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer

Abstract

Reviews 271 common belief that they were “assimilationist, tame and imitative, romantic and pastoral.” And French feminist critic Marcienne Rocard discusses recent Chicana poetry to prove her contention that the Chicana is not twice but four times a minority. Entirely devoted to recent Chicana writing is the anthology Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature. The editors compiled this collection of poetry, prose, and critical essays in order to “celebrate” the conference on Mexican American Women’s Literature held in Irvine, California, in the spring of 1987. The book is an ambitious venture. The editors claim to have included works that are innovative in form and content. In their words the collected works are “daring inroads into ‘new frontiers’ which the authors make in their writings. The poets, short story writers and critics are all taking risks, they are expanding the boundaries of Chicana literature and literary criticism, offering new vistas and new possi­ bilities.” The poetry section, consisting of poems by Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucha Corpi, Evangelina Vigil-Pinon, and Denise Chavez, is daring in its exploration of often repressed topics such as Chicana sexuality and eroticism. The prose fiction section bears witness to the innovativeness of Chicana writing. Denise Chavez blurs traditional genres by combining “theatre, sculp­ ture, folk belief and folk art” in her Novena Narrativas y Ofrendas Nuevomexicanas . Roberta Fernandez’ short story “Andrea” is an effective combination of a narrative and a history of Mexican American theatre. And in her short story “Miss Clairol” Helena Maria Viramontes deals with a factory worker, by now representative of a large segment of the Chicana population. The five critical essays of the collection are concerned with a “dialectic of theoretical applications.” Norma Alarcon successfully applies white feminist criticism to Chicana writing while Diana Rebolledo and Yvonne YarbroBejarano question the validity of American and European male as well as white feminist criticism. Both these collections are thought-provoking and important contributions to the study of Hispanic literature in the United States. UTE KRAUTER University of New Mexico Haa Shuka. Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives. Edited by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1987. 532 pages, $35.00/$12.50.) This is a collection of stories told by 12 Alaska native authors born between 1880 and 1912. There are 14 stories, with two different versions of three stories. It is the first volume in the series Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature. 272 Western American Literature The narratives were recorded in oral performance, transcribed, translated into English, and edited with annotations. They are laid out with the original Tlingit and English translation on facing pages. The style of the original is preserved as much as possible in both the Tlingit transcription and the idio­ matic translation. The lines are laid out not continuously as in prose, but according to pauses, reflecting the pace of the stories as told in Tlingit. The effect resembles some renderings of Homer and other oral literature. The stories deal with universal themes of literature such as coming of age, alienation, identity, conflict of loyalty, pride and arrogance, separation and loss. They emphasize the importance of living spiritually, socially and physically in harmony with the environment. Rituals and taboos regulate this relationship, and violations may result in natural disaster, loss of life and a rupture in the social fabric. The first narrative recounts the migration of the Tlingit people beneath a glacier from the interior to the coast of Alaska. The last is an account of the first contact with Russian explorers two hundred years ago. In between are tales of spiritual journeys on land and sea, clan origins, broken taboos and retribution, relations with bears, strength and prowess in hunting. An Odysseus is blown out to sea and returns home after an extended absence to find his marital relations altered. A woman steps on bear droppings, insults the bear, marries the bear, is rescued by her brothers, and returns to her family. A young girl calls out to the glacier, causing it to roll over her village. The editors, who are poets as well as translators with training in linguistics, anthropology, and comparative literature, provide readable, moving...