The Routledge Introduction to Native American Literature

ISBN-13: 9781138291256 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 200 str.

Drew Lopenzina

Opis

This Introduction intends to make available for both student and instructor a more refined set of tools for decolonizing our approaches prior to entering an unfamiliar literary landscape. This book will introduce indigenous perspectives and traditions as articulated by indigenous authors who have been projecting their voices into the national dialogue for a period of roughly 400 years. Paramount to this consideration of Native-centered reading is the understanding that literature was not something bestowed upon Native peoples by the dominant white culture either through benevolent interventions or violent programs of forced assimilation. Native literature precedes colonization and Native stories and traditions have their roots in both the precolonized and the decolonizing worlds. And almost without fail, when Native writers elected to enter into the dominant discourse of written western literacy, they did so with the intention of maintaining some vestige of indigenous culture and community. Writing was and is a strategy for survival.