American Indian Stories Research Articles

Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature

In this provocative study of eight novels, Karen E. Beardslee asserts that American writers often engage with folk traditions as a necessary part of their characters journeys to wholeness. Focusing not only on African American, Native American, and Hispanic American cultures but also on women s culture, Beardslee traces the connections between folk legacies and the search for selfhood in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century works. Within each chapter, a novel by a contemporary author and one from an earlier period are brought together: Whitney Otto s How to Make an American Quilt and Harriet Beecher Stowe s The Minister s Wooing; David Bradley s The Chaneysville Incident and Charles Chesnutt s The Conjure Woman; Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony and Zitkala-Sa s American Indian Stories; and Roberta Fernandez s Intaglio and Maria Cristina Mena s The Birth of the God of War. These pairings are not based on matters of intertextuality or influence but are chosen according to the folk groups to which the novels characters belong. This strategy enables Beardslee to trace the particular legacies that inform the work of the twentieth-century authors. As Beardslee notes, contemporary texts and the critical commentary on them have focused, until fairly recently, on the search for self in male (usually white) characters. Such works have also positioned that search outside the character s family or community and have usually emphasized its futility. With the growing shift toward multiculturalism in fiction, however, folk traditions have come to play an increasingly crucial role in characters journeys to self-awareness as well as in the success of those journeys. Thoroughly researched and cogently argued, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of both folklore and literature as it explores the relationship between knowing one s cultural heritage and achieving a sense of self that is whole instead of fragmented, connected instead of drifting. The Author: Karen E. Beardslee teaches in the Department of Language and Literature at Burlington County College in Pemberton, New Jersey. Her articles have appeared in MELUS, The Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, and the Zora Neale Hurston Forum.

Fiddler on the threshold: Cultural Hybridity in Gertrude Bonnin's American Indian stories

This examination of the autobiographical collection American Indian Stories (1921) by Native American woman writer Gertrude Bonnin, considers the various strategies of resistance to assimilation that are used. Homi Bhabha's theory of the Third Space and of hybridity illuminates this study of a “liminal” writer (Fisher xiii). Subjected to assimilationist schooling, Bonnin reveals in her stories how she negotiated the gulf between white and Indian cultures with her hybrid identity and found a ‘subaltern’ voice by using the English language as a counter‐colonial strategy.

The Lightning within: An Anthology of Contemporary American Indian Fiction

American Indian stories have fascinated the world for all the right reasons: vigor, depth, subtlety, brightness. In the 1960s a brilliant renaissance began. Out of it came such gifted writers of fiction as N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, and Michael Dorris. In bringing them together, Lightning Within celebrates some of the best work being done today in the novel and short story. This work is intended as in introduction and overview, and it serves that purpose nicely. Velie's anthology ...[offers] some of the finest writing available. Highly recommended.--Library Journal. An ideal introduction ...especially for readers of American western history who may be unaware of what Indian literary artists are revealing, in their considerable work, of the contemporary Indian spirit.--James McKenzie, North Dakota Journal of the Northern Plains. The Lightning Within is a path to some of the best Indian fiction of the past twenty years, as well as to a true understanding of Native peoples.--Commercial Appeal (Memphis). The richness of much of this writing comes from the countless multiple pressures and identities that are part of being Native American.--Window. Alan R. Velie, a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, has written a general introduction and headnotes to each selection. He is the author of Four American Indian Literary Masters and other books.