The Cold-and-Hunger Dance

Abstract

Influenced by her rich Cherokee heritage and Christian faith, Diane Glancy's writing, like her multicultural background, is simultaneously liminal and transcendent. Being a 'marginal voice in several worlds' does not victimize Glancy but empowers her 'to tell several stories at once'. She describes this migratory process of Native storytelling and the narrative multivocality it produces as a 'cold-and-hunger dance'. Cold-and-Hunger Dance, Glancy's boldest and most stimulating collection of essays to date, is an imaginative and honest account of journeys to and from the margins of memory, everyday life, and different cultural worlds.Along the way, familiar images and concepts are juxtaposed to create a literary terrain both engaging and unsettling: the Bible and Black Elk Speaks converse; Glancy's dispute with a local bakery is played out as if on a world stage of warring nations; eggs and cultural identity implicate each other; and, lost Native languages speak powerfully through their silences to modern Native writers. The creative twists and darting metaphoric excursions engendered by this journey provide an intimate glimpse into the process and problematics of language for modern Native authors. Diane Glancy is an associate professor of English at Macalester College. She is the author of Claiming Breath (Nebraska 1992), which won the North American Indian Prose Award and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; West Pole; and, other books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and essays.