American Spirituality Research Articles

African American Spirituality and Diabetes Self-Care

African American Spirituality and Diabetes Self-Care

The Quantum Leap from Karma to Dharma: Moral Narrative in the Writings of Jon Kabat-Zinn

In this essay, I explore the writings of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program, to discern in them a moral framework that provides a narrative arch of human decline and restoration through greater mindfulness. I argue that this moral narrative framework has striking similarities to what Slavoj Zizek describes as the “Holderlin paradigm” which characterizes the thinking of post-Hegelian thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida. This narrative takes late modernity as both the nadir of a process of historical decline in the West and the site of its potential restoration. In demonstrating the similarities between the two narratives, I seek to show how the “Buddhification,” as Braun calls it, of American spirituality is internally complex, and to offer some conceptual tools from the philosopher Jane Bennett to account for breakdowns that the scholarly study of the mindfulness meditation phenomenon produces in our broad analytical typologies.

Spirituality: What Does it Mean and to Whom?

AbstractWhile there is increasing interest in the topic of spirituality, scholars have limited data on its meaning among ordinary Americans. Based on an open‐ended question in a new nationally representative survey, this article documents the elements that make up people's views of spirituality. We find that theism is the dominant focus of American spirituality, with a relatively small percentage of people offering exclusively immanent descriptions. Cognitive and relational orientations are more prominent than behavioral or ethical orientations. Using latent class analysis, we identify seven distinctive views of spirituality that vary considerably in their prevalence and social profiles. Binary logit regression shows that spiritual self‐identification, belief in God, and worship attendance are the religious factors most strongly associated with views of spirituality. Among sociodemographic predictors, significant associations with gender, race, education, and income are limited or absent. In contrast, the influences of age and political ideology are more substantial.

“To Battle for Human Rights”: Afro-Creole Spiritualism and Martyrdom

Abstract From 1858 to 1877 a group of Afro-Creole men in New Orleans practiced American Spiritualism and received messages from the spirit world. The spirits of the dead advised the Cercle Harmonique, as they called themselves, on issues of theology and politics. Though the Spiritualism practiced by the Cercle Harmonique was similar to that of white, northern Protestants, the practice of the Afro-Creoles was a distinctively African American religion. One of the clearest ways to navigate the process in which Spiritualism became Afro-Creole Spiritualism is by attending to the group's use of the language and rhetoric of martyrdom. Martyrdom provided the Cercle Harmonique a language for understanding the racial violence that surrounded them, and that language also offered the proper response to the violence. The Spiritualist martyrs who engaged the Cercle Harmonique were those who died in defense of Black rights and in contest with white supremacy.

Japanese American Spiritual Ambiguity and Arts of Silence

Japanese American Spiritual Ambiguity and Arts of Silence Brett J. Esaki The current political climate is not new. My Japanese American ancestors walked a similar path of uncertainty, and I am listening to them. In my early years, they told me about their experiences and today they continue in spirit, yet their messages have not resonated fully until the last decade or so. Some of these lessons are straightforward and stated. For example: Imperial powers live in a bath of fear, developing fantasies of hidden pirates and saboteurs and lashing out when the phantoms seem to take form. Imprisoning and banning whole classes of people out of phantom military necessity is not necessary, extremely expensive, and nearly impossible to reverse. Creativity, strength, and endurance are essential for resisting and surviving another's nightmares. The rest of the messages are ambiguous and silent. My ancestors did not have as many educated and empowered representatives, so they cannot fully guide my path. I count myself among those who have benefitted from my ancestors’ perseverance, and I turn to women, African Americans, and Native Americans who can help me to fill in the gap of experience (and listening to others is part of my ancestors’ wisdom). In addition to the clear lessons and non‐existent ones, my ancestors send silent messages of ambiguity. Esteemed Japanese American theologian Fumitaka Matsuoka explained that ambiguous messages like these come from Japanese Americans’ “holy insecurity,” which he later phrased “holy amphiboly.” In this article, I will apply Matsuoka's holy amphiboly to the struggle of Japanese American artists to express messy, contradictory, and ambiguous realities in their art. Artists do so purposefully and sometimes in order to negotiate the political minefield of audiences who do not want to hear direct stories of injustice. By exploring instances of silent ambiguity, I hope to articulate some of the complicated messages of Japanese Americans who have survived times like ours. Ambiguity of Japanese American history It is accurate to say that the history of Japanese Americans is ambiguous. Our first immigrants were well educated (in respect to the time), hardworking, and with low criminality rates, yet spit on and accused of monopolizing (read “invading”) industries and enslaving women. The next generation, born in the United States as American citizens, were categorized as enemy aliens and imprisoned en masse (the Internment Camps during WW II). The following generation successfully secured reparations for their parents’ losses, yet were depicted as the model minority and symbols of Japan's rise in technology. I am part of the generation after that, and the results are yet to come. Scholars have commented on the precarious position of Japanese Americans. In the early twentieth century, sociologist Robert E. Park presented Japanese Americans as a prime example of his theory, the Marginal Man, or one who is in transition to assimilation but is held from full assimilation by oppression. Other examples from the 1920s included Jews and mixed‐race African Americans. A more recent theory is racial triangulation, where Asian Americans serve as models of economic success through hard work and as rhetorical discipline of stagnant or downwardly mobile African Americans. At the same time, Asian Americans are categorized as foreigners, rendering them incapable of reaching whiteness. Likewise, there has been a common trope among Japanese Americans that we are suspended between white and black. These characterizations of Japanese Americans have utility in some respects and shortcomings in others, yet they all describe the straightforward fact that our lives are ambiguous. Given this fact, one might ask: Why haven't people just stated that and built from this point? The answer is that there have been countless Japanese Americans who have done this, but it has been difficult for people to understand, especially considering the challenge of understanding ambiguity, as others in this journal attest. In reaction to severe tragedies and minor misfortunes, Japanese Americans used the expression “shikata ga nai,” which is frequently translated as “it can't be helped.” More accurately, it is “what happened is nothing” or “do not dwell on that and move on.” More colloquially, it is “sh*t happens” or “shake it off” (in the lyrics of Mariah Carey and Taylor...

Japanese American Spiritual Ambiguity and Arts of Silence

Japanese American Spiritual Ambiguity and Arts of Silence

Sociolinguistics: A Linguistic Analysis of the Era of Violence in African American Spirituals, Jazz, & Blues - Civil Action and Effective Citizenship Education through the Language War

Sociolinguistics: A Linguistic Analysis of the Era of Violence in African American Spirituals, Jazz, & Blues - Civil Action and Effective Citizenship Education through the Language War

African American Spirituality: Through Another Lens

African American spirituality provides a rich lens into the heart and soul of the black church experience, often overlooked in the Christian spiritual formation literature. By addressing this lacuna, this essay focuses on three primary shaping qualities of history: the effects of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement under Dr. Martin Luther King's leadership, and the emergence of the Black Church. Four spiritual practices that influence African American spirituality highlight the historical and cultural context of being “forged in the fiery furnace,” including worship, preaching and Scripture, the community of faith and prayer, and community outreach. The essay concludes by recognizing four areas of the lived experiences of African Americans from which the global church can glean: (1) persevering in pain and suffering, (2) turning to God for strength, (3) experiencing a living and passionate faith, and (4) affirming God's intention for freedom and justice to be afforded to every individual.

We Shall Not Be Moved/No Nos Moverán: Biography of a Song of Struggle by David Spener

<i>We Shall Not Be Moved/No Nos Moverán: Biography of a Song of Struggle</i> by David Spener

Rock: An Unlikely Metaphor for Spirituality, Family Therapy, Mental Health and Illness

This article brings together fragments of a conceptual scheme and a number of big ideas: religious faith, contexts of African American spirituality, mental health and illness; and family therapy and the extended metaphor of sedimentary rock formation. Religion and spirituality are used somewhat interchangeably in this essay to signify embodied spirituality and sacred unity. The rock metaphor captures the idea of multiple entities that, like layers of sedimentary rock, make up families and communities and provide cohesion and a connection with the past. The rock metaphor captures the quality of hardness that may have either a positive of negative meaning and that allows for resilience in the face of adversity. Both qualities can be found in African American spirituality and Black churches. Both qualities have a relationship with the numinous. The qualities of the rock and their relationship with the numinous offer family therapists’ new insights and ways to think about how to approach a clinical presentation.

Ethnic identity in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water

The paper analyzes the elements that constitute Native American identity in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1993). In the novel, King juxtaposes two ethnic identities, white Christian American, representing the majority in the American society, and Native American, representing a minority. King portrays the struggle of Native Americans in the US and Canada to define their identity given the historically long rift between their native heritage and the white culture. Stigmatized for their ethnicity and race, Native Americans were exposed to marginalization and prejudice and forced to somehow overcome this position. The struggle has been made more difficult by the efforts of the dominant society to assimilate them and at the same time prevent them from claiming full citizenship. King carefully weaves the stories of his characters, who constantly go back and forth between the reservation lands and the outside world, having to find their position in both and usually not belonging to either. By focusing on the world of the reservation, Native American spirituality, tribal tradition of storytelling, and creation myths, King examines different aspects of Native American ethnic identity and, through juxtaposition of the Native American ethnic identity with that of the dominant society, reevaluates the marginalized position of the Native Americans.

More than a Façade: The Kenekuk Religion Revisited

More than a FaçadeThe Kenekuk Religion Revisited Matthew Garrett (bio) Key Words Kansas, Kickapoo, prayer sticks, spirituality Nearly 160 years have passed since the death of Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet. He led a band of Great Lakes Indians in Illinois and Kansas from the 1820s until smallpox claimed his life in 1852. He is most noted for his pacifist resistance to relocation and encroaching Americans. Historians have examined Kenekuk in a handful of articles, chapters, and one autobiography, and almost uniformly depicted him as a pragmatist. The Prophet's sole biographer defined Kenekuk's religion first and foremost as a tool to resist dispossession and defined his legacy as "helping his followers to adjust to white society and retain their lands, without resorting to warfare or losing their identity as Indians."1 The Prophet constructed a new religion and culture designed to mimic elements of Christianity and Western "civilization" as part of a conscious strategy to peacefully resist dispossession. This portrayal of the religion as an "outwardly" adaptation often suggests an empty façade and discounts the deeper impact of the experience.2 Other authors have echoed this interpretation.3 This approach limits the validity of the Kickapoos' newfound spirituality by defining it by its relation to encroaching whites and not for its own merits and meaning to adherents. The question remains, "What did the Kenekuk religion mean to the Kickapoos?" Determining meaning can be difficult, particularly in a community with few records and no modern adherents. The Kenekuk religion quickly declined after Kenekuk's death, and the surviving documentation is limited and highly filtered through the interpretations of white observers. Most firsthand witnesses in the nineteenth century attended to the Kickapoos as Methodist, Presbyterian, or Catholic missionaries. Sarah Carter's work on unrelated Methodist tracts reveals how such missionaries commonly misinterpreted Native lifeways as either [End Page 293] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Artist George Catlin visited the Kickapoos at Fort Leavenworth in 1830, where the prophet likely sat for this portrait. Catlin described him as "a very shrewd and talented man." Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison Jr. [End Page 294] "irreligious," "misguided," or even "devilish" to reaffirm Euro-American cultural and religious superiority. Others fixated on perceived doctrinal parallels to Christianity—sin, atonement, immortality of the soul—as indicators of some liminal status en route to an eventual conversion that also reaffirmed development theory.4 The same is true of missionaries who visited Kenekuk: some perceived him as a rival whom they criticized as savage; others believed his message served as a valuable precursor to the Kickapoos' eventual conversion to a more correct Christian church. Their records are central to any interpretation of the Kenekuk religion but are clearly limited and must be moderated by historic and ethnographic context. Speculation by outsiders—then and now—easily lends itself to accusations of white shamanism; nevertheless, difficult historical questions linger about the meaning of Kenekuk's religion.5 Far from claiming exclusive interpretive privilege, this article explores one possible meaning of the Kenekuk religion by exploring its cultural and societal impact on adherents. Decades ago Clifford Geertz called for an emphasis on "cultural dimensions of religious analysis" that both examined "the system of meanings" as well as how they related to "social-structural and psychosocial processes."6 Geertz pointed to the interplay between theology and lived religion, as manifest through the shifting interpretations of symbols, ethos, and worldview. His rally cry led to a shift beyond the dogmatic and into the experience of religion. Lawrence Sullivan answered that charge in Native Religions as he sought to reframe the study of indigenous American spirituality to include both traditional exploration dogma as well as an emphasis on "the religious responses they inspire in individuals and communities."7 This autochthonous approach avoids the longstanding mistake of obviating the essence of Native American spirituality with the longstanding Western fixation on theology. Anthropologist Jordan Piper explained, "Because Christianity has traditionally placed a primary value on belief, belief has become central to the Western understanding of religion. . . . However, in most of the world's religions, behavior is accorded more concern than belief."8 Barre Toelken likewise...

The World Day of Prayer: Ecumenical Churchwomen and Christian Cosmopolitanism, 1920–1946

AbstractBetween World War I and World War II, the World Day of Prayer (WDP) expressed Protestant women's Christian cosmopolitanism that combined rituals of prayer with a liberal program of social activism and humanitarianism. The WDP began as a way to unite Protestant women together across organizational denominational lines as women's missionary societies entered a period of decline in the 1920s. The WDP raised awareness of home and foreign missionary work and took up a collection to support designated home and foreign mission projects, but it quickly emerged as a site for ritual creativity. The planning committees and prayer service facilitated Protestant women's efforts to replace a traditional understanding of missionary work with a cosmopolitan Christianity that coupled American women's spirituality with a liberal program supportive of racial diversity and internationalism. The prayer services became sacred spaces to enact “unity in diversity,” even though this was always more an ideal than a reality. Churchwomen used the evident dissonance between a universalist vision of a united Christian world and the realities of racial, religious, and national difference to generate discomfort in the prayer services and to deepen participants' spiritual experiences. While the interwar era is understood as a period of theological schisms and Protestant declension, a gendered analysis of Protestantism through the World Day of Prayer shows that it was also a period of religious transformation as churchwomen formulated a modern social gospel that paired spirituality and action in ways that would shape Protestant churches for the next several decades.

Sublime Physick by Patrick Madden

Reviewed by: Sublime Physick by Patrick Madden Russell Burrows Patrick Madden, Sublime Physick. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2016. 244 pp. Cloth, $24.95. Should a second contract from a big press testify of talent, energy, verve? Yes, as it happens, in the case of Patrick Madden's Sublime Physick. This comes just six years behind his Quotidiana, which had been the first of Madden's contracts from Nebraska's university press. Quotidiana qualified in a final round of judging for a pen award and earned further recognition from ForeWord magazine and from the Association of Mormon Letters. On separate fronts, editors from the likes of The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing had also been taking his essays. We should all start out so well. His Sublime Physick looks like a strong second stage. Now, by way of categorization: I said okay to this reviewing assignment, supposing that Physick would resemble the science and nature writing of David Quammen, or Mary Roach, or Lewis Thomas, or Sue Hubbell, or Loren Eiseley—all of whose stuff savors of a sweet, smoked salmon. Essayists are of two sorts, in my order of things. Some fall in behind their subjects, personae riding comfortably in back seats. Madden is not of that stripe. He puts persona first, subject second. I imply few preferences when I describe this other way of working. Annie Dillard and David Sedaris are two of many who make themselves their subjects. They mix in the wide world as a kind of thickener, cornstarch in a tart berry pie. Well enough. A good number of us have taken both pleasure and instruction from the congenial personalities beaming from behind those pronouns. If I dare to throw out a little backhanded encouragement, I would hold up Edward Hoagland and Joseph Epstein as two who balance their subjects and personae so perfectly that their scales sit dead-center still. But this perhaps is just food for thought. In the meantime, Madden's essays have their ways of scribing arcs up from the mundane to the transcendent. A daughter's playground accident, Madden's own birthday, playing host to a famous foreign writer—all are spiritual grist work. Take the seventh essay of twelve: "Buying a Bass." Madden parts with an uncomfortably heavy sum for "a Fender Geddy Lee model jazz bass" (101). This is drama: his antagonist, the glib clerk; the setting, a franchise "Guitar Center"; the occasion, "a Black Friday"; the damnable goal, "a [End Page 120] 20 percent discount" (102). In a word, soul-sucking. The would-be Orpheus then gets further acquainted with himself as a "plunker" (103). Frustration is again epiphany's price. No miracle, he—Madden must be witness to the miracle—this in the person of Paul McCartney. Sir Paul made the world "a better place" when, seemingly inspired, he "[strung] up an upside-down Rosetti Solid 7 with piano wire" (104–05). (There are additional examples of pop music moving the soul, and they're quite a bit of fun to read.) The point is, Madden testifies of the spirit having worked in all kinds of ways. Mormons think along those lines. They're like this. One more feature of the writing deserves brief comment: Madden's style is highly allusive. It seems the rare page that doesn't have an excerpt. More than half the chapters begin with excerpts. The fourth chapter has twenty-three hefty ones in just thirty-one pages. Add to the excerpts the smallish inset illustrations, numbering forty-eight in total, and we have here more of a commonplace book than a sustained and smooth exposition. Is this scrapbook style something lately out of our creative writing departments? If so, it's a revival of a popular subgenre from early modern Europe. John Locke wrote a how-to manual on piecing together commonplace books. I mention this because if abundant page breaks and discursive styles aren't for you, then Sublime Physick should give some pause. On the positive side, I find the excerpts well chosen. Indeed, they're erudite in their own right. Russell Burrows Weber State University Copyright © 2017 Western Literature Association

Music, Place, and the Everyday Sacred: Libby Larsen and Lessons in Environmental Awareness

Across centuries and cultures, mountains and gardens have been identified with the sacred; they are privileged places for encounters with the divine; they materialise moral force. But they are also contested places whose meanings and values vary. This article considers the ways American composer, Libby Larsen, has musicalised the multivalence of gardens and mountains in two pieces, In a Winter Garden, and Up Where the Air Gets Thin. It frames the discussion within the context of four axioms for understanding the character of sacred places proposed by Belden C. Lane, a scholar of theological studies, in his book Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. In both works Larsen invites listeners to contemplate one reading of these places and to act on the lessons contained within the natural world.

The lightning whelk: An enduring icon of southeastern North American spirituality

We describe the lightning whelk (Busycon sinistrum) and show how its shells were used among coastal peoples along the Gulf of Mexico and lower Atlantic coast. During the Middle and Late Archaic periods, lightning whelk shells were transported hundreds of km from the coasts to the Midsouth where they were made into a variety of artifacts that were interred in graves. We explore the symbolic significance of sinistral (“left-handed”) snails in post-Archaic times, focusing on the lightning whelk as a metaphor of spiral/circle, fire/sun, and purification/continuity among Native Americans of the eastern United States. This particular marine mollusk shell had special spiritual significance—and hence economic and political value—for several millennia, particularly in the southeastern United States, but its ritual importance as cultural icon resonates with cultures around the globe. The importance of the sinistral whelk as both medium and message has been inadequately appreciated by American archaeologists.

A “duty” to “tabulate and record”: Emma Hardinge Britten as Periodical Editor and Spiritualist Historian

Critics interested in Emma Hardinge Britten have acknowledged her status as the primary historian of the spiritualist movement via her 1870 book publication, Modern American Spiritualism . I argue that Britten’s periodicals—the American-based Western Star (1872) and British-based Two Worlds (1887–92) and Unseen Universe (1892–93)—were also central to her effort to market herself as spiritualist historian. By publishing historical serials drawn from larger projects she was working on, Britten not only provided an alternative history to combat criticism from spiritualism’s competitors but also established a space for herself in a tradition dominated primarily by men.

James Weldon Johnson and the Speech Lab Recordings

James Weldon Johnson and the Speech Lab Recordings Chris Mustazza (bio) Projects of historical reconstruction are common to all contemporary oppositional intellectuals in America. This follows from the erasure of ‘other’ from dominant historical accounts; if it is said by those who deny us now that we have no past, then we have to insist that we have a past as deeply as we have a present. (Hunt 1990:201) Introduction On Christmas Eve in 1935, James Weldon Johnson met with Columbia Speech Professor George W. Hibbitt (1895-1965), a lexicologist and scholar of American dialects, and read thirteen of his poems. Johnson, a polymath who distinguished himself as a poet, a lawyer, a professor, a lyricist for Tin Pan Alley musicals, the American Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua, and a leader of the NAACP, had returned to his alma mater to capture his poetry in— or perhaps reconvert it to—sound.1 Together, Johnson and Hibbitt created four aluminum records of Johnson reading his poetry, with selections from Johnson’s 1917 Fifty Years and Other Poems (his first collection of poems), the much-praised 1927 God’s Trombones, and his 1935 St. Peter Relates an Incident. While bits of these recordings, most frequently the recording of “The Creation,” have emerged in poetry audio anthologies,2 the majority have lain dormant in the archive. It is odd that these recordings were never published in light of their quality. Many poetry recordings made in Hibbitt’s speech lab were released in a series of records produced by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and sold to schools on a subscription basis (more on this later). Johnson may have opted to record only for Columbia’s on-site record archive, and as a result, these recordings were never distributed, save for the fragments that made it out of the archive—until now. For the first time, these recordings are available for public download, historically contextualized, as part of the PennSound archive (Johnson 1935). The context for the creation of these recordings begins in 1931, when the poet Vachel Lindsay approached Barnard Professor of Speech W. Cabell Greet (1901-1972) and implored him to record Lindsay reading his poetry. Lindsay had recently been rebuffed by the commercial record companies he had approached since their executives had believed that poetry was not sufficiently commercial to warrant the production. Greet, who possessed a Speak-o-Phone recording device that he used to record samples of American dialects for his research, agreed to use it to record Lindsay. In January of 1931, Greet and Lindsay recorded nearly five hours’ worth of Lindsay’s poetry (Mustazza 2014).3 Lindsay died nine months later. Galvanized by what he saw as the recording industry’s disrespect for poetry in favor of more profitable content, Greet partnered with Hibbitt to create a series of recordings of American poets, all made in Greet’s speech lab, with some being distributed in a series that would come to be known as The Contemporary Poets Series. Greet and Hibbitt worked with Walter C. Garwick, an audio engineer and the inventor of the portable field-recording device he later sold to John A. Lomax for use in recording African American spirituals, cowboy songs, and other ethnographic repertoires (Mustazza 2014). The series, which grew to include poets such as T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Harriet Monroe, and Robert Frost, was distributed by the NCTE on 78rpm records to schools and to the public on a subscription basis, intended for “teachers, students, and other lovers of literature” (Greet 1934:312). Greet and Hibbitt actively sought out poets whose work was better heard than read, those that foregrounded the sonic facets of their poetry. In a call for suggestions for poets to be recorded in the series, published in American Speech, Greet prompted (1934:312): “You are asked to give some thought to the use of records in studying and teaching literature, to ask yourselves the following questions: What poems of present-day authors lose most when transferred to the printed page, and should, therefore, be preserved as the poet reads them? What poets and what poems would I and my friends...

Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality. By Diana L. Hayes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. xi + 228 pages. $22.00 (paper).

Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality. By Diana L. Hayes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. xi + 228 pages. $22.00 (paper).

Transnational perspectives in Simon J. Ortiz’s short fiction

Abstract Contemporary American short stories from Simon J. Ortiz’s Men of the Moon (1999) can be considered a testing ground for conceptualizations of (trans)-national identities from Randolph Bourne’s ‘Transnational America’ (1916) to David Hollinger’s Postethnic America (1995). In these stories the aesthetic concretization of contingent experiences by Native Americans both confirms and critiques the theoretical concepts of postcolonial studies and transnational American Studies. Both Ortiz’s ‘The Way You See Horses’ and ‘Crossing’ unfold the relativity and observer-dependence of individual perception as well as the epistemological awareness and cultural dialectics of Julia Kristeva’s Strangers to Themselves (1991). Actual intercultural and transnational encounters in Ortiz’s stories often spell disaster much more radically than promise. Only three of the stories in Ortiz’s collection, ‘Pennstuwehniyaahtse: Quuti’s Story’, ‘Hiding West of Here’ and ‘To Change Life in a Good Way’, suggest interethnic solidarity. These stories help develop a humanism which expresses itself in the dissociation of foreignness and familiarity in postcolonial and transnational contexts. Ortiz’s short fiction thus functions as a liminal third space which exposes both the fragmentation and potential of time-honoured Native American spiritual convictions. That such spiritualism has partially sunk into oblivion does not spell irrelevance and obsolescence. Paradoxically it turns into the precondition of mutual rapprochements of cultural difference and both intercultural and transnational acceptance. What renders Ortiz’s reassertion of Native American spiritualism humanist is the caution and tolerant awareness of the other that accompanies it.