Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

The half-blood -- half Indian, half white -- is a frequent figure in the popular fiction of nineteenth-century America, for he (or sometimes she) served to symbolize many of the conflicting cultural values with which American society was then wrestling. In literature, as in real life the half-blood was a product of the frontier, embodying the conflict between wilderness and civilization that haunted and stirred the American imagination. What was his identity? Was he indeed "half Indian, half white, and half devil" -- or a bright link between the races from which would emerge a new American...

Through cycles of war and peace, resistance and assimilation, trauma and regeneration, Cherokees have long debated what it means to be Cherokee through protest writings, memoirs, fiction, and retellings of traditional stories....

Using traditional characters from Southwestern Indian mythology, Alicia Otis has written original poetic interpretations for our modern times. Spiderwoman, Crow-mother and Coyote are reincarnated in contemporary language and settings. These new myths have also been illustrated in unique and creative drawings by the author. Alicia Otis was first exposed to Southwestern Native American culture by her grandfather who had an extensive collection of Indian artifacts. She soon was able to acquire first-hand knowledge of Indian mythology, lore and customs when her family moved to the...

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, the most prominent writers of Native American descent, collaborate on all their works. In these interviews, conducted both separately and jointly, they discuss how their writing moves from conception to completion and how The Beet Queen, Tracks, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and The Crown of Columbus have been enhanced by both their artistic and their matrimonial union.

Being of mixed blood and having lived in both white and Native American worlds, they give an original perspective on American society. Sometimes with humor and...

Stephen Wade offers a guide to major writers, their key works, and influential background factors including the postmodern, the master-narrative and metafiction. The themes, issues, and philosophies of writers including Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer are inter-related and wider literary and historical topics are alluded to and explained. Covering women's writing, novels, poetry, and drama, the author offers an informative and highly readable guide to the achievements of a key group of writers in twentieth-century American literature.

For better or worse, representations abound of Native Americans as a people with an innate and special connection to the earth. This study looks at the challenges faced by Native American writers who confront stereotypical representations as they assert their own ethical relationship with the earth. Lee Schweninger considers a range of genres (memoirs, novels, stories, essays) by Native writers from various parts of the United States. Contextualizing these works within the origins, evolution, and perpetuation of the green labels imposed on American Indians, Schweninger shows how writers...

Gerald Vizenor was a journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune when he discovered that his direct ancestors were the editor and publisher of The Progress, the first Native newspaper on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Vizenor, inspired by the kinship of nineteenth century Native journalists, has pursued a similar sense of resistance in his reportage, editorial essays, and literary art.

Vizenor reveals in Native Liberty the political, poetic, visionary, and ironic insights of personal identity and narratives of cultural sovereignty. He...