Native American Literatures ed. by Laura Coltelli

Abstract

Reviews 139 to adopt the work as a textbook, and anybody reading or teaching Native American literature should consider using it. Castro takes a close look at some ofthe major ways the mainstream reading public formed its first images of the oral and written literature of Native Americans. He cites abuses and distortions, and traces the sometimes hidden motives of white writers who wrote about, translated, and stole from Native works. He also discusses healthy collaboration, like that between John G. Neihardt and Black Elk. The best section of the book deals with Neihardt’s editing of the material Black Elk chose to share with him. Neihardt’s choices changed the nature of the book, toning down the militance and the scenes of battle, concentrating instead on what Neihardt felt was a religious obligation to emphasize Black Elk’s vision of “the great circle of relatedness which is the power ofthe world.”Another major contribution in this work is Castro’sanalysis ofthe difference between cultures in which songs are sacred and alive and those in which poetry is not an integral part of the society. The discussion is provoca­ tive, clear, and lively. Two warnings—the title is a little misleading. Half of this book focuses on the early part of the century, and the rest takes on very few poets (Olson, Rothenberg, Snyder). It also concentrates on material that is fifteen or twenty years old. The discussion is focused and useful, but neither comprehensive nor current. One matter of sensitivity—Castro uses interchangeably the phrases “Native American poetry” and “the red man’s poetry.” Even in the late seventies and early eighties when he composed this work, the racist snd sexist connotations of the latter phrase should have been apparent. Castro ends the volume with a brief examination of the work of a few of the best-known Native American writers. As Maurice Kenny says in the foreword, “Interpreting theIndian reinforces the fact that American Literature is simply not American if it excludes the Native American chanters and writers who support and enrich it, who perhaps are even a strong post or two of its very foundation.” PEGGYSHUMAKER University ofAlaskaFairbanks Native American Literatures. Edited by Laura Coltelli. (Pisa, Italy: Servizio Editoriale Universitario, 1989. 215 pages, $20.00.) Among the most interesting, for American readers of this collection of essays published in Italy, are the essays by European scholars. Here we can see some of the kinds ofconclusions Europeans are making about Native American 140 Western American Literature literatures and deduce some impressions that Native American texts make as they encounter European readers. Bo Scholer considers “young and restless men”—alcoholic Native Ameri­ can fictional characters in a range of texts who struggle with the “two-culture conflict.” Scholer concludes that while the problems are not motivated by a single cause, it is obvious that the writers emphasize the tremendous pool of communal resources in the anticipation that its healing and prophylactic quali­ ties be achieved. Hartmut Lutz discusses “the circle as philosophical and struc­ tural concept in Native American fiction today.”He concludes thatwhen “trying to deal with Native American literature we have to be aware that in Native American perception there is simply no difference between the human, the natural and the supernatural, or between the individual, basis and superstruc­ ture”;and that therefore instead of literature ofalienation we have literature of return. Laura Coltelli discusses tradition and renewal through re-enacting myths and stories in Ceremony. She discovers that the “stories inserted in the text of the narrative by means ofwhich Silko narrates the myths of the Lagunas, are the mythical counterpart of what takes place in the novel.” Her secondary sources are predominantly Paula Gunn Allen and early anthropologists. Much of what is contained in these discussions by European writers is already familiar, even redundant, to American scholars; perhaps these essays show that none of us can seem to skip a stage when we try to analyze Native American literature. The basic interpretations must be made by us all, perhaps, before we can go on to anything new. Laura Coltelli also wrote the introduction to this collection—a collection made, as she says, to reaffirm the...