Why No Iroquois Fiction?

Abstract

S ince the 1960s, many Native American writers have been publishing wonderful poems and prose narratives, among other things finally proving vain the earliest white settlers' darkest hopes. The Natives have stood their ground. Looking out from their reservation borders, their vision is clearing. Cautiously we coin the term Native American literature to characterize their output. Consider novels such as Love Medicine by the North Dakota Chippewa Louise Erdrich, Ceremony by the New Mexico Laguna Leslie Marmon Silko, Fools Crow by the Montana Blackfoot James Welch. Compare them to memoirs such as The Way to Rainy 3 Mountain by the New Mexico Kiowa N. Scott Momaday, The Business of Fancy Dancing by the Spokane and Coeur d'Alene Sherman Alexie, and : Black Eagle Child by the Iowa Mesquakie Ray Youngbear. Together these < works no more constitute a uniform Native American literature than o these words a Polish American sentence. Together with writers lesser known, these writers write variously well in various literary forms5 205 almost always influenced by very different earlier, usually oral Native storytelling traditions. To categorize the variety of their productions for academic agendas (like conference papers, journal articles, and course syllabi) necessarily overlooks the nuance of point of view that readers read individual literary works to savor. Yet comparative readings draw out underlying features of this writing as transparent overlays placed upon a topographical map.