Native American Literature Research Articles

The Fiction of Asian American Literature

The Fiction of Asian American Literature Susan Koshy (bio) Epistemology is true as long as it accounts for the impossibility of its own beginning and lets itself be driven at every stage by its inadequacy to the things themselves. It is, however, untrue in the pretension that success is at hand and that states of affairs would ever simply correspond to its constructions and aporetic concepts. —Theodor W. Adorno Asian American Literature: Institutional Legacies The boundaries of what constitutes Asian American literature have been periodically interrogated and revised, but its validity as an ordering rubric has survived these debates and repeatedly been salvaged by pointing to some existing or imminent stage of ethnogenesis, in which its representational logic would be manifest. Inherent in more recent definitions of the term has been the practice of a strategic deferral—an invocation of the work of culture-building that the debates themselves perform, and through which Asian American identity and its concomitant literature would come into being. Unlike African American, Native American or Chicano literature, Asian American literature inhabits the highly unstable temporality of the “about-to-be,” its meanings continuously reinvented after the arrival of new groups of immigrants and the enactment of legislative changes. 1 However, the tactic of deferral in the interests of institutional consolidation has had its costs, and it is these costs that this essay will consider. The affirmation of ethnic identity as a means of political and institutional space-claiming, and the very newness of the field which originated in the late sixties, have deferred questions about its founding premises. But it is precisely this question, “How are we to conceptualize Asian American literature taking into account the radical disjunctions in the emergence of the field?” that it has now become historically and politically most urgent to ask, because of pressures both inside and outside the community. The radical demographic shifts produced within the Asian American community by the 1965 immigration laws have transformed the nature and locus of literary production, creating a highly stratified, uneven and heterogeneous formation, that cannot easily be contained within the models of essentialized or pluralized ethnic identity suggested [End Page 315] by the rubric Asian American literature, or its updated post-modern avatar Asian American literatures. 2 Moreover, we have entered a transnational era where ethnicity is increasingly produced at multiple local and global sites rather than, as before, within the parameters of the nation-state. This dispersal of ethnic identity has been intensified, in the case of Americans of Asian origin, by dramatic geopolitical realignments under way in the Pacific, that have reshaped the political imaginaries of “Asia” and “America” and the conjunctions between these two entities. Asian American literary production takes place within and participates in this transformed political and cultural landscape. Asian American Studies is, however, only just beginning to undertake a theoretical investigation of these changes, rendering itself peripheral to the developments inside its constituent group. Instead of an engagement with the new critical forces shaping its interdisciplinary project, much of the scholarship in the field has either continued to rely on paradigms of ethnicity produced in the inaugural moment of the field, or has sought to incorporate the changes through the fashionable but derivative vocabulary of post-modernism, post-colonialism or post-structuralism; formulaic invocations of “multiculturalism,” “hybridity,” “plural identities,” or “border-crossing” are used promiscuously without any effort to link them to the material, cultural or historical specificities of the various Asian American experiences. Although substantial historical scholarship has been produced, the field has been weak in theoretical work, especially when compared to Chicano, Native American and African American Studies. The lack of significant theoretical work has affected its development and its capacity to address the stratifications and differences that constitute its distinctness within ethnic studies. I will substantiate these arguments by reviewing the interpretive methods adopted thus far in delineating the boundaries of Asian American literature. I will do this by examining three paradigmatic attempts to discuss what constitutes Asian American literature, and analyzing the methodological problems and impasses revealed in these critical works: Frank Chin’s Preface and Introduction to Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974); Elaine Kim’s full...

Native American Literatures: Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America . Brian Swann.

Native American Literatures: Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America . Brian Swann.

A MELUS Interview: Joseph Bruchac

If the past thirty years encompass what has been called a Renaissance period in Native American literature, Joseph Bruchac, who has devoted his life to translating one culture to another through his writing and teaching, must surely be considered a Renaissance man. He has taught English in Africa and African American and Native American literature in this country. As the editor of The Greenfield Review Press, dedicated to the publication of multicultural material, he has published anthologies of poetryfrom American prisons-collected during seven years of teaching in the prison system-as well as anthologies of Native American, Asian American and African American poets. Greenfield Press has published early works by many writers who have gone on to become quite well known, such as Linda Hogan, Barney Bush, and Beth Brant, and an instructional volumefor other small press publishers. Bruchac's writing includes poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and retellings of traditional Native American stories. Yet, he is perhaps best knownfor his award-winning storytelling. Much of his time is devoted to telling stories in schools, and his stories have been published in more than twenty books and numerous magazines, and in both audio and videoformats. Bruchac's contributions to the educational process are numerous. Among his notable works of children's literature are his praised collaborations with Michael Caduto, Keepers of the Earth and Keepers of the Animals. In these books, traditional Native stories serve as a centerpiecefor lessons about environmental concerns. Motivated by a belief that the world is in need of saving, Bruchac says: My writing...give[s] me a chance to my insights into the beautiful and all toofragile world of human life and living things we have been granted. Which is one of the reasons I write-not to be a man apart, but to share (Albany Times Union 1 [June 1980]). Born in upstate New York, Bruchac is of Abenaki and Slovak heritage. In his essay Notes of a Translator's Son, Bruchac translates the FrenchCanadian termfor a person of mixed blood, metis, into English as translator's son. Unlike half-breed, a terms he finds insulting, metis means that you are able to understand the language of both sides, to help them un-

Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert

The annual seasons and rhythms of the desert are a dance of clouds, wind, rain, and flood water in it roles from bringer of food to destroyer of life. The critical importance of weather and climate to native desert peoples is reflected with grace and power in this personal collection of poems, the first written creative work by an individual in O'odham and a landmark in Native American literature. Poet Ofelia Zepeda centers these poems on her own experiences growing up in a Tohono O'odham family, where desert climate profoundly influenced daily life, and on her perceptions as a contemporary Tohono O'odham woman. One section of poems deals with contemporary life, personal history, and the meeting of old and new ways. Another section deals with winter and human responses to light and air. The final group of poems focuses on the nature of women, the ocean, and the way the past relationship of the O'odham with the ocean may still inform present day experience. These fine poems will give the outside reader a rich insight into the daily life of the Tohono O'odham people.

Research in Western American Literature: 1994–95

J A N R O U S H Utah State University Research in Western American Literature: 1994-95 This year’s research in western American literature follows closely the trends noted in last year’s assessment, reflecting both an increased awareness o f the environm ent as well as a recognition of the culturally diverse groups who inhabit that environm ent, both past and present. This year, however, the m ajor emphasis is on Native Americans, for out o f the sixteen m asters’ theses and sixty-four dissertations that comprise the studies of western American literature, thirty focus in some way on the pervasive im pact that Native Americans have had on the land. The range of such studies is immense: some, such as “R obert Henri: Portrait of the American Indian” or “Native Americans in Paintings and Sculp­ tures in the U nited States Galleries of the Fine Arts Palace at the 1893 W orld’s Columbian Exposition” relate the perceived images of Native Americans by the white culture. Others, such as “Creation of an Identity: American Indian Protest A rt” and “T urde and Lizard Images in Lakota Art: A Case Study in Interpretation” in art or ‘Tricky Tribal Discourse: T he Poetry, Short Stories, and Fables of Creek W riter, Alex Posey” and “Inseparable and Distinct: An U nderstanding of Navajo N adleehi in a Traditional Navajo Worldview” in literature attem pt to portray a Native American corrective for such images by rendering a m ore accurate portrait. Individual voices who speak out for this Native American worldview, in addition to Alex Posey, include Louise Erdrich, Leslie M armon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor. Following Native American literature or art, the m ajor em phasis in the research is on a sense of place—them es of nature, wilderness, or the environm ent; eighteen different theses and dissertations focus on these concerns, represented by “Place and Landscape in Midwestern Ameri­ can Literature” or ‘T h e Ethics of Identity: Constructions of Self and 410 Western American Literature Other in the Nineteenth-Century American Landscape.” Closely en­ twined or overlapping with these are such studies as “Cartographies of Undomesticated Ground: Nature and Feminism in American Women’s Fiction and Theory” and “Toward a Postmodern Pastoral: Contempo­ rary Women Writers’ Revisions of the Natural World”with its treatment of authors Gretel Ehrlich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, and Annie Dillard, that fuse women’s political and “gender” awareness with their awareness of nature. Twelve separate studies are about women’s impact on western American literature, with another fifteen focusing on four individual writers: Erdrich (4), Cather (4), Austin (4), and Silko (3). Twain, with six treatments, is the only other individual author to receive sustained attention, although there is increased interest in Rudolfo Anaya with two dissertations focusing solely on his works and others commenting on his significance as a part of the overall Chicana/o literature in the West. I would like to offer the premise that one of the earliest indicators of what is happening—or will happen—in any discipline can be found in the research being done by entering scholars. If that premise holds true, then I would add that the field of western American literature is indeed undergoing a profound metamorphosis, one that reflects both an enlightened and inclusive attitude toward the American West. COMPLETED MASTERS THESES: American Literature Crippen, Larry Lee Huck, Tom, and No. 44: The Tripartite Twain. (M.A.) University of North Texas, 1994. Davis, Elizabeth (Lisa) J. Ultima as Earth Mother in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. (M A) Texas Women’s University, 1993. Frenzel, Lois Payne Letters of a Pioneer Woman in Texas: A Study. (M.A.) Texas A&M University-Kingsville, 1994. Research 411 Lamont, Victoria Elizabeth Writing Women Into America: Women, Democracy, and the Western, 1902-1920. (M.A.) University of Guelph (Canada), 1993. Leonard, Lisa C. Tracking and Trapping the Narrative Strategies of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks. (M.A.) McGill University (Canada), 1994. Power, Sherry Decker The Theme of Change: The Thread Running Through Six Kelton Novels. (M.A.) Tarleton State University, 1994. American Studies Geherin, Christopher David Vanishing the Indian...

Theory, Discourse, and the Native American Literature Class

Theory, Discourse, and the Native American Literature Class

American Literary Naturalism and its Twentieth-Century Transformations: Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo.

American Literary Naturalism and its Twentieth-Century Transformations: Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo.

American literary naturalism and its twentieth-century transformations: Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo

This study examines American literary naturalism as a narrative form and the ways in which it has been reworked in modern and postmodern texts. Civello views naturalism as a form of narrative that continued to manifest itself in the work of Norris, Hemingway and DeLillo.

Textual Hermeneutics and Belated Male Heroism: Edith Wharton's Revisions of The House of Mirth and the Resistance to American Literary Naturalism

Textual Hermeneutics and Belated Male Heroism: Edith Wharton's Revisions of The House of Mirth and the Resistance to American Literary Naturalism

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism.

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism.

Dictionary of Native American literature

Dictionary of Native American literature

In Search of a Dialogic Criticism: Ethnocriticism and Native American Literatures

IN ETHNOCR1TICISM, ARNOLD KRUPAT OFFERS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND cross-cultural consideration of some of the thorniest issues central to the study of Native American literatures. He presents an eclectic discussion of at least three major foci: history of interrelations between ethnography and literature; several close, but brief, readings of Native American texts (Cherokee memorials, oral narrative performances, and autobiographies); and recurring call for the practice of what he calls ethnocriticism, ... an interdisciplinary mix of anthropology, history, and critical theory (4). As an alternative to postmodernism and in the service of a cosmopolitan [global] social order (245), Krupat proposes vision of literaryhistorical-ethnographic critical practice for the study of Native American literatures, particularly, and other marginalized literatures, generally. Summarized briefly, the practice of ethnocriticism promotes multiculturalism, which leads to polyvocal polity-that is to say, society in which Bakhtinian dialogic values replace Western binary oppositions.

The Literary Stelae of Hidden Nations, The Question of Whether or Not Native American Literature Is A Minor Literature Depends on Who Asks The Question

The Hidden Native American Nations do have their living stelae in the same sense that archaeologists find the stelae of Maya civilization in the great cities of central America. When one speaks of a minor literature one must be aware that a minor literature doesn't come from a minor language; it is that literature which a minority population constructs within a major language. A minor literature has three characteristics.

Mark Twain: Protagonist for the Popular Culture by Marlene Boyd Vallin

340 WesternAmerican Literature a weight and consequence of new things.” Michael Heffernan finds The Teeth MotherNaked at Last to be “uncompromising,” “frequently unbearable”because of Bly’s insistence on writing a “nightmare poem” about the “barbarities of American wars.”Joyce Carol Oates, in her review of the same volume, calls Bly “intellectual and relentlessly emotional.” Several reviewers identify Jungian influences in Bly’s poems. For instance, Stephen Kuusito, in his review of Iron John, calls Bly a “popularizer of archetypal psychology,”whose heroic archetype “restores men to the center of the cosmological drama.” The longer essays present, quite naturally, a broader and deeper examina­ tion of Bly’s work, both poetry and prose. Their attention ranges from the earlier capturing of the essence of particular landscapes (through “deep im­ ages”), to Jungian shadows on the 1970s political landscape, to the Jungian “soul-making”in IronJohn. The volume closes with a short excerpt from Richard Sugg’s Robert Bly in which Sugg places Bly “squarely within the American Romantic tradition”and identifies Bly’s ultimate importance as, through Bly’s own “psychic journey,” redefining theAmerican poet. The composite of all selections is appropriately represented by Sugg’s finaljudgment that Bly’s “ultimate achievement... is in awakening, even inspiring, his audience with a sense of human community.” All this is a heavy burden for one literary artist to carry. However, the selections in this volume convince the reader that Robert Bly manages that burden very well. JAMES R. SAUCERMAN Northwest Missouri State University Mark Twain: Protagonist for the Popular Culture. By Marlene Boyd Vallin. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992. 208 pages, $49.95.) Marlene Boyd Vallin’s study is the eighteenth book in a series titled Great American Orators, organized by Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan. In the “Series Foreword,”Duffy and Ryan state that “The idea for a series of books on great American orators grew out of the recognition that there is a paucity of book-length studies on individual orators and their speeches.” This assertion establishes the first of numerous expectations that Vallin’s book fails to meet, since there is scarcely enough here to qualify this as a book-length study (64 of the 208 pages comprise Vallin’s discussion of Twain; the remainder is mostly a collection ofTwain’s speeches, which is the best part of the book). Such dearth would perhaps be a minor flaw in a book that offered some­ thing significantly new to Twain scholarship, butVallin’s book falls short here as well. Many of the critical insights and rhetorical analyses of Twain’s “works of oratory”are no more than critical commonplaces shared across the table in any Twain graduate seminar: “Twain was critical ofthe practice ofcivilizing. Civiliza­ Reviews 341 tion corrupts, distorts reality, and encourages hypocrisy.” Beyond this, Vallin offers such insights as “Twain’s use of the ship metaphor seems to indicate his sense of individualism. We are all pilots of our own ships, with the free will to chart our own courses.”And these “profundities”are themselves quite few and far between. Vallin sets forth many large (and some potentially interesting) claims, but she presents very little development of or evidence for her assertions. For example, she claims that “the focus of Twain’s performance was on the audi­ ence, specifically the interaction between speaker and listeners,” but no real discussion of this idea or analysis of Twain’s speeches with this point in mind ever materializes. We are led, by the editors of this series, to expect “a complete analysis of a speaker’s rhetoric,” which will investigate “speech invention, style, delivery, organizational strategies, and persuasive effect” for the “public address scholar,”but Vallin’sbook falls far short ofthat aim. Myrecommendation is that you go see Hal Holbrook instead. MICHAEL HOBBS NorthwestMissouri State University New Voicesin Native American Literary Criticism. Edited by Arnold Krupat. (Wash­ ington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. 555 pages, $79.00/$34.95.) In Arnold Krupat’s introductory unapologetic apology, he explains that presenting a volume of eclectic essays on Native American literatures is still useful and necessary even though some academics may prefer more “post”minded approaches. New generations of students, new sources...

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism ed. by Arnold Krupat

Reviews 341 tion corrupts, distorts reality, and encourages hypocrisy.” Beyond this, Vallin offers such insights as “Twain’s use of the ship metaphor seems to indicate his sense of individualism. We are all pilots of our own ships, with the free will to chart our own courses.”And these “profundities”are themselves quite few and far between. Vallin sets forth many large (and some potentially interesting) claims, but she presents very little development of or evidence for her assertions. For example, she claims that “the focus of Twain’s performance was on the audi­ ence, specifically the interaction between speaker and listeners,” but no real discussion of this idea or analysis of Twain’s speeches with this point in mind ever materializes. We are led, by the editors of this series, to expect “a complete analysis of a speaker’s rhetoric,” which will investigate “speech invention, style, delivery, organizational strategies, and persuasive effect” for the “public address scholar,”but Vallin’sbook falls far short ofthat aim. Myrecommendation is that you go see Hal Holbrook instead. MICHAEL HOBBS NorthwestMissouri State University New Voicesin Native American Literary Criticism. Edited by Arnold Krupat. (Wash­ ington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. 555 pages, $79.00/$34.95.) In Arnold Krupat’s introductory unapologetic apology, he explains that presenting a volume of eclectic essays on Native American literatures is still useful and necessary even though some academics may prefer more “post”minded approaches. New generations of students, new sources and translations of literatures, and new Native and international scholars are adding constantly to the field. Thus this volume is not “consistent or unified in subject matter, method, perspective, or mode of discourse”; yet these essays add fresh, com­ plex, and sophisticated narratives and analyses to the field of Native American literary criticism. Further, contributors have worked on materials from South America, Mexico, the United States, and the Canadian Arctic. The volume is divided into three sections. Part 1: PERFORMANCES AND TEXTS includes Geoffrey Kimaball on Koasati narrative, Ridie Wilson Ghezzi on Ojibwe storytelling, Janet Hendricks on Shuar war stories, Jay Fikes on Huichol funeral-ritual oratory, Hans-Ulrich Sanner on Hopi clown songs, Perry Shearwood on Inuit writing, and Miguel Leon-Portilla on Nahuatl poets. Part II: AUTHORS AND ISSUES includes Wolfgang Hochbruck on Choctaw author Todd Downing, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay on Sarah Winnemucca, William Willard on “an anthropology ofanthropology”ofsouthwestern places, Alanna Kathleen Brown on “the editorialized Mourning Dove,” Celeste River on the writings of Frank Bird Linderman, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard and Kimberly Blaeser on 342 WesternAmerican Literature Gerald Vizenor, David Moore on “postcolonial praxis”in Silko and Young Bear, and Shamoon Zamir on Leslie Silko. Part III: ETHNOCRITIQUES includes Greg Sards on Elizabeth Colson and “hearing the old ones talk,”Jana Sequoya on “how (!) is an Indian?: a contest of stories,” Clifford Trafzer on “the first history of the Americas,”Katherine McNamara on “writing and meaning in the work of Peter Kalifomsky,” Kathleen Danker on Felix White, Sr. and the Winnebago trickster, and Crisca Bierwert on “the translative commentary of MartinJ. Sampson.” The selections demonstrate an unusual awareness of the interaction be­ tween performance and text, author and translator, Native correspondent and academic reader, teacher and student, and contributor, editor, and even advi­ sory board member. Krupat writes that “some students of Native American literatures, in common with most of those who study the cultural expression of other marginalized or subordinated groups in America, increasingly have shown acute concern for the usefulness of their work not only to their col­ leagues, but as well to those about whom they speak.” It is this sense of multifarious “consultation” that adds unexpected density and texture to this excellent collection. GRETCHEN RONNOW Wayne State College White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. By June Namias. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. 378 pages, $39.95/ $16.95.) June Namias’new book on the histories, stories, and visual representations of Indian captivity in North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries participates in the recent resurgence ofinterest in captivity narratives among historians and literary critics. The book is an impressive compilation of evidence of how compelling Euro-Americans have found such stories over...

The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism: Selected Essays and Reviews

In his first book devoted exclusively to naturalism, Donald Pizer brings together thirteen essays and four reviews written over a thirty-year period that in their entirety constitute a full-scale interpretation of the basic character and historical shape of naturalism in America.The essays fall into three groups. Some deal with the full range of American naturalism, from the 1590s to the late twentieth century, and some are confined either to the 1890s or to the twentieth century. In addition to the essays, an introduction in Pizer recounts the development of his interest in American naturalism, reviews of recent studies of naturalism, and a selected bibliography contribute to an understanding of Pizer's interpretation of the movement.One of the recurrent themes in the essays is that the interpretation of American naturalism has been hindered by the common view that the movement is characterized by a commitment to Emile Zola's deterministic beliefs and that naturalistic novels are thus inevitably crude and simplistic both in theme and method. Rather than accept this notion, Pizer insists that naturalistic novels be read closely not for their success or failure in rendering obvious deterministic beliefs but rather for what actually does occur within the dynamic play of theme and form within the work.Adopting this method, Pizer finds that naturalistic fiction often reveals a complex and suggestive mix of older humanistic faiths and more recent doubts about human volition, and that it renders this vital thematic ambivalence in increasingly sophisticated forms as the movement matures. In addition, Pizer demonstrates that American naturalism cannot be viewed monolithically as a school with a common body of belief and value. Rather, each generation of American naturalists, as well as major figures within each generation, has responded to threads within the naturalistic impulse in strikingly distinctive ways. And it is indeed this absence of a rigid doctrinal core and the openness of the movement to individual variation that are responsible for the remarkable vitality and longevity of the movement.Because the essays have their origin in efforts to describe the general characteristics of American naturalism rather than in a desire to cover the field fully, some authors and works are discussed several times (though from different angles) and some referred to only briefly or notat all. But the essays as a collection are complete in the sense that they comprise an interpretation of American naturalism both in its various phases and as a whole. Those authors whose works receive substantial discussion include Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, James T. Farrell, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Kennedy. Of special interest is Pizer's essay on Ironweed, which appears here for the first time.

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism

Text as Trickster: Postmodern Language Games in Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart

trickster situates the participant audience, the listeners and readers, in agonistic imagination: there, in comic discourse, the trickster is being, nothingness and liberation; loose seam in consciousness; that wild space over and between sounds, words, sentences end narratives; and at last the trickster is comic shit. (Gerald Vizenor, Narrative Chance) Gerald Vizenor is curious figure in American literature. A mixedblood Ojibway poet, playwright, journalist, essayist, novelist, and critic, Vizenor writes that incorporate research, polemic, quotation, criticism, and poetry, as well as standard materials. What these hybrids, these mongrels? the reader demands when first confronted with his noncanonical stories. As Robert Silberman puts it, The didactic and imaginative impulses constantly at odes in Vizenor's work (13-14). Despite critic Arnold Krupat's 1989 call for the application of contemporary literary theory to Native American texts (Krupat and Swann 113-28), Vizenor's writing has remained problematic for those who attempt to fit it into paradigm of Native American literature.(1) In Crossbloods: Bone Courts, Bingo and Other Reports, Vizenor defends his mongrel texts quoting Roland Barthes, contending that narrative is first and foremost prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances--as though any material would fit to receive men's stories (65). Through his narrator in Four Skin Documents, Vizenor pokes gentle fun at editors (and readers) who have trouble accepting satire, criticism and facts in the same package (Landfill Meditations 163-65). Vizenor has theoretical and political reasons for refusing to commit to conventional form or genre. Theoretically, he aligns himself with the postmodern tradition, as evidenced by the critics he cites in his collected essays--Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, to name few. In Vizenor's view, one looks for neither meaning nor in the postmodern novel. Griever: An American Monkey King in China begins with Octavio Paz epigraph: Writing is search for the meaning that writing itself violently expels. At the end of the search meaning evaporates and reveals to us reality that literally is meaningless. In Heirs of Columbus, Vizenor quotes Milan Kundera: The novel...is the territory where no one possesses the truth (185). And in Trickster of Liberty, he cites Julie Kristeva's definitions of the dissident, clearly aligning himself with the writer who experiments with the limits of identity, producing texts where the law does not exist outside (155-56). In other words, language not reality, identity or truth--is preeminent in the postmodern text. In Narrative Chance, Vizenor defines postmodernism as an overture to amend the formal interpretation and transubstantiation of tribal literatures (4), thus making his political agenda perfectly clear. He has declared war--word war--on the racist denial of tribal languages (11). Like N. Scott Momaday, Vizenor views words as both cause and cure. He believes that when social scientists attempt to capture American Indian culture in cold litanies and catechistic monodramas (Trickster x), they not only reify the flexible nature of native culture, but reinvent it for their own self-serving ends. In Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade, Vizenor argues that written language has been the privileged weapon of the dominant party in the culture wars since the earliest days of contact; consequently, few of those victimized by it know how to use it. As Tosamah tells his pan-Indian congregation in Momaday's House Made of Dawn, contemporary tribal people live in white world. Surrounded by the white man's word, they are as children, mere babes in the wood, but, says Tosamah, a child can listen and learn (94). …

Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival

An unprecedented gathering of more than 300 Native writers was held in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1992. The Returning the Gift Festival brought more Native writers together in one place than at any other time in history. In compiling this volume, Joseph Bruchac invited every writer who attended the festival to submit new, unpublished work; he then selected the best of the more than 200 submissions to create a collection. The anthology includes works from every corner of the continent, representing a wide range of tribal affiliations, languages, and cultures. In addition to contributions by 92 writers are two introductory chapters: Joseph Bruchac comments on the current state of Native American literature and the significance of the Festival, and Geary Hobson traces the evolution of the event itself.

Neon Pow-Wow: New Native American Voices of the Southwest ed. by Anna Lee Walters

376 WesternAmerican Literature tude of place or mind. Some came to Idaho specifically to be hermits, to isolate themselves from the entrapments of civilization: law and order, diet, domestic­ ity. Some, like Wheelbarrow Annie, found seclusion to be a great and good companion and wed it for better or for worse. Through research and byhaving a good ear for story, Conley captures these persons as legend and as character. His journalistic-styled essays tell the tales and refine the facts. He has recorded more than “Hermits, Solitaires, and Individualists.”He has fleshed out a time, an atmosphere, when the quirky, selfreliant person trusted that distance and seclusion go hand-in-hand. A notion much proved by Beaver Dick, Buckskin Bill, The Hermit ofImpassable Canyon, The Ridgerunner, and Dugout Dick. A notion unattested by the Wildhorse Cowgirl and Free Press Frances; yet, a notion too soon in its dotage for the Outback Outlaw, Claude Dallas, who murdered two Idaho Fish and Game Officers in 1981. For Dallas, the Wild West wasn’t over. At the heart of Idaho Loners is what every reader might expect and want: these strange and sometimes unruly individuals have left or are leaving their mark on Idaho and the imagination of Idahoans. There is an undercurrent throughout that suggests the familiaritywith which Idahoans relate their knowl­ edge of these peculiar folks who live, principally, in Idaho’s Outback. This is a book about characterand characters. Each coot conjured up is unique of mind and spirit: Cougar Dave, The Cove Recluse, even the good All-American former spy—The Poet. And to help the reader settle in and believe the truth, there are pictures and map. The pictures are specific, life-giving images of the characters, often with their remote locale as backdrop. The map is less specific, just enough to jumpstart a curious reader stranded along a dirt road. Idaho Loners: Hermits, Solitaires, and Individualists is a handsome book, informative, and well worth reading. WILLIAM STUDEBAKER CollegeofSouthern Idaho Neon Pow-Wow: New Native American Voices of the Southwest. Edited by Anna Lee Walters. (Flagstaff: Northland Publishing, 1993. 131 pages, $12.95.) This anthology groups the works of twenty-three writers from New Mexico and Arizona and was inspired bythe tremendous success ofthe 1992 “Returning the Gift” conference that brought together hundreds of Native American writers. The selections in this anthology focus on the importance of storytelling as the principle agent for the survival of the Native American culture. The first selection is a prose poem by Della Frank (Navajo) which begins with these words of affirmation, “I am that which is: A Navajo Person” and Reviews 377 proceeds to define what it means to be Navajo. The poem presents one of the most important themes in Native American literature today, namely the search for a sense of identity. Indeed, all the poems and stories included in this anthology form a kaleidoscope that strives to define the Native American culture through its traditions as well as through the somber reality of life for Native Americans today. Several selections stand out in this anthology. Carlson Vicenti’s story “Hitching,” set in Colorado, presents a demoralizing vignette of urban life, plagued by pollution, destruction, and intolerance. Also disturbing is the story “Neon Pow-Wow” which has inspired the titled of the anthology and which points to the destructive effects of alcoholism on Native Americans. Esther G. Belin’s prose poem “Blues-Ing on the Brown Vibe” features the traditional Southwestern trickster figure Coyote making his way through what the poet calls “navajoland.” Lorenzo Boca’s “Ten Rounds” offers a visual as well as a spiritual experience. The poem is composed of ten lines; each line is written in a circle and provides an insight into Native American world views. Many stories retell traditional myths or legends such as “WhyThere Are Blackberries Around Cedar Trees.”Vee F. Browne’s “How To Be A Southwest Indigenous Writer” is an inspiring and humorous essay that offers a parody ofthe traditional image of the writer to which is added a generous pinch of Indian humor. For the past twenty-five years, writers such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, James Welch, Louise Erdrich...