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

In Conversations with Sherman Alexie, the writer displays the same passion, dynamic sense of humor, and sharp observational skills that characterize his...

Pick up a work of typical literary criticism and you know what to expect: prose that is dry, pedantic, well-meaning but tedious--slow-going and essentially humorless. But why should that be so? Why can't more literary criticism have a political edge and be engaging and fast-paced? Why can't it include drama, personal narrative, and even humor? Why can't criticism become an artistic performance, rather than just a discussion of art?

"Art as Performance, Story as Criticism" is Craig Womack's answer to these questions. Inventive and often outrageous, the book turns traditional literary...

In Mapping the Americas, Shari M. Huhndorf tracks changing conceptions of Native culture as it increasingly transcends national boundaries and takes up vital concerns such as patriarchy, labor and environmental exploitation, the emergence of pan-Native urban communities, global imperialism, and the commodification of indigenous cultures.

While nationalism remains a dominant anticolonial strategy in indigenous contexts, Huhndorf examines the ways in which transnational indigenous politics have reshaped Native culture (especially novels, films, photography, and performance) in...

Native American Literature underwent a Renaissance around 1968, and the current canon of novels written in the late twentieth century in American English by Native American or mixed-blood authors is diverse, exciting and flourishing. Despite this, very few such novels are accepted as part of the broader American literary canon.

This book offers a valuable and original approach to contemporary Native American literature. Dennis's contemplation of space and spatialized aesthetics is compelling and persuasive. Considering Native American literature within a modernist framework, and...

In The American Indian Intellectual Tradition, David Martinez presents thirty-one essays that exemplify Native American intellectual culture across two centuries. The occasion for many of the pieces was the exertion of colonial and then federal power to limit or obliterate the authority and autonomy of American Indians. The writers featured were activists for their home communities and for all indigenous people.

Martinez divides his book into three critical epochs of American Indian history with section introductions that provide political context for the selected readings....

Is William Faulkner's fiction built on a fundamental dichotomy of outcast individual versus the healthy agrarian community? The New Critics of the 1930s advanced this view, and it has shaped much Faulkner criticism. However, in Faulkner's Marginal Couple, John Duvall posits the existence of another possibility, alternative communities formed by "deviant" couples. These couples, who violate "normal" gender roles and behaviors, challenge the either/or view of Faulkner's world.

The study treats in detail the novels Light in August, The Wild Palms,...

For many years Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Glasgow has been regarded as a classic American regional novelist. But Glasgow is far more than a Southern writer, as Linda Wagner demonstrates in this fascinating reassessment of her work.

A Virginia lady, Glasgow began to write at a time when the highest praise for a literary woman was to be mistaken for a male writer. In her early fiction, published at the turn of the century, all attention is focused on male protagonists; the strong female characters who do appear early in these novels gradually fade into the background.

But Ellen...

Known for her engrossing explorations of Native American themes, Louise Erdrich has created award-winning novels, poetry, stories, and more for three decades. "Tracks on a Page: Louise Erdrich, Her Life and Works" examines Erdrich's oeuvre in light of her experiences, her gender, and her heritage as the daughter of a Chippewa mother and German-American father.

The book covers Erdrich from her birth to the present, offering fresh information and perspectives based on original research. By interweaving biography and literary analysis, the author, who is herself Native American, gives...

In 1983, a group of citizens in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, formed Sna Jtz'ibajom, the Tzotzil-Tzeltal Maya writers' cooperative. In the two decades since, this group has evolved from writing and publishing bilingual booklets to writing and performing plays that have earned them national and international renown.

Anthropologist Robert M. Laughlin has been a part of the group since its beginnings, and he offers a unique perspective on its development as a Mayan cultural force. The Monkey Business Theatre, or Teatro Lo'il Maxil, as this branch of Sna Jtz'ibajom calls itself,...

Stories of the volcano goddess Pele and her youngest sister Hi'iaka, patron of hula, are most familiar as a form of literary colonialism--first translated by missionary descendants and others, then co-opted by Hollywood and the tourist industry. But far from quaint tales for amusement, the Pele and Hi'iaka literature published between the 1860s and 1930 carried coded political meaning for the Hawaiian people at a time of great upheaval. Voices of Fire recovers the lost and often-suppressed significance of this literature, restoring it to its primary place in Hawaiian...