Product Description
The Dictionary of Native American Literature is a unique, comprehensive, and authoritative guide to the oral and written literatures of Native Americans.It lays the perfect foundation for understanding the works of Native. The book features reports on the oral traditions of various tribes and topics such as the relation of the Bible, dreams, oratory, humor, autobiography, and federal land policies to Native American literature. Eight additional essays cover teaching Native American literature, new fiction, new theater, and other important topics, and there are bio-critical essays on more than 40 writers ranging from William Apes (who in the early 19th century denounced white society's treatment of his people) to contemporary poet Ray Young Bear.
Packed with information that was once scattered and scarce, the Dictionary of Native American Literature -a valuable one-volume resource-is sure to appeal to everyone interestedin Native American history, culture, and literature. ... Read more

Product Description
This unique and breathtaking collection of poetry provides both English and Ahtna language versions of many of the poems. ... Read more

Product Description
These interviews showcase three Native writers in dialogue with a European critic who becomes their partner in exploring individual and tribal identity, cultural survival and exploitation, and writing techniques. ... Read more

Product Description

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 comparing it with writers such as Woolf, Stein, T.S Eliot and Proust results in a valuable and enriching context for the selected texts.

Vital reading for scholars of Native American Literature, this book will also provide good grounding in the subject for those with an interest in American and twentieth century literature more generally.

Customer Reviews (1)

AWSOME book
great book. beautifully good. short and sweet ... Read more

Product Description
In its consideration of American Indian literature as a rich and exciting body of work, The Voice in the Margin invites us to broaden our notion of what a truly inclusive American literature might be, and of how it might be placed in relation to an internationala "cosmopolitan"literary canon. The book comes at a time when the most influential national media have focused attention on the subject of the literary canon. They have made it an issue not merely of academic but of general public concern, expressing strong opinions on the subject of what the American student should or should not read as essential or core texts. Is the literary canon simply a given of tradition and history, or is it, and must it be, constantly under construction? The question remains hotly contested to the present moment.Arnold Krupat argues that the literary expression of the indigenous peoples of the United States has claims on us to more than marginal attention. Demonstrating a firm grasp of both literary history and contemporary critical theory, he situates Indian literature, traditional and modern, in a variety of contexts and categories. His extensive knowledge of the history and current theory of ethnography recommends the book to anthropologists and folklorists as well as to students and teachers of literature, both canonical and noncanonical.The materials covered, the perspectives considered, and the learning displayed all make The Voice in the Margin a major contribution to the exciting field of contemporary cultural studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent
A book that challenges white male assumptions of "canonical merit". This is an impressive and breath-takingly insightful look at eurocentrism and its cronies, while advocating the genuinely importantexperiences of Native Americans and the tradition of narrative they have sobravely created. ... Read more

Product Description
A wonderful collection of essays by Native American and other scholars about issues central to Native American literature and life. Includes an extended interview with author James Welch, as well as reviews of newly published works relevant to questions of boundaries and sovereignties. ... Read more

Product Description

The earliest Native American writers wrote tribal histories or autobiographical accounts. Today, Native American writing is steeped in the oral traditions of many peoples and reflects a facility with language that is equally at home in prose or poetry.

Native American Literatures is a sourcebook that can enhance any reader's appreciation of both the writers and their works. Cross referencing allows readers to move easily among the listings, guiding them to other examples of an author's works and from character to character within a given novel.

Product Description
Born in Los Angeles, a blue-eyed descendant of the Nez Perce band, Patricia Penn Hilden passed in white society, a "vanished Indian, and safe." In this memoir of her urban, mixed-blood experience, she recalls her grandfather, a lingering presence and connection to traditions and people that rarely figure in mainstream American culture's notions of Indian identity. Photos & illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Rigged?
I think this book is a personal rant passing as something to inform readers about American Indians. Can anyone become an American Indian by reclaiming an identity she denied her whole life and then writing as if she represents American Indians? To me that is strange. My observation is that the three ravingly positive reviews are so vague about the book's actual contents that one can't help feeling that they were solicited by the author's friends. The one negative review was, by contrast, very detailed and seems to have been unsolicited!

Anger Management
There are so many holocausts, so many genocides.We, the humans, are evil monkeys, no two ways about it.I often doubt to the extreme that we are created in God's image.No way, Jose !Murder, torture, rape, kidnapping, theft, insult, lies, bigotry, hatred, destruction---our stock in trade.But now, the question is, does any one group have a monopoly on these things ?I would say no.Even if your "group" has engaged in a great deal of any of the above activities are you, personally, thereby guilty ?I would say no again.That's why I found Hilden's book pretty irritating.

Born a white-looking, urban, mixed-blood Indian, with Anglo-Quaker, Osage, Nez Perce and maybe Mexican roots, the author spent her youth in California passing as white, but secretly (or internally) feeling a strong Indian identity.A person in this position would be torn; a sensitive person all the more so.When Hilden writes of her personal experiences-all the influences, the traumas, and batterings of outrageous fortune that a mixed-blood Indian might face in postwar America---I find her writing clever and interesting, certainly passionate.How else would I know about such a person if not by reading her book ?I've never met any Indians and (pace Ms. Hilden) I have never wanted to be one, though when I used to go to Western movies, I always rooted for the Indians, having knowledge of my own holocaust.If Amazon browsers are interested in such an autobiography, I could strongly recommend this book.However.....

The first 90 pages of WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS is pretty much of angry blast at whites, at the perpetrators of the genocide, at the continuous theft of Indian land, at the misappropriation of Indian culture, at the collectors of Indian bones and Indian folklore, at anthropologists, at the misrepresentation of everything Indian.Well, it's true.Events in (to choose from such a wide field) Armenia, Jewish history, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Tasmania show that it was hardly unique.However, do you need to read yet another blast at perfidious, lying, stupid ________s (fill in the blank)?A question.Do you want to read a book that sometimes has as many as 18 usages of ironic quotation marks on a single page ? They signal her anger, her sarcastic turning on everyone and nearly everything. I wondered, as I read, who was good in this world, who did the right thing, how should Indians actually represent themselves then, which authors wrote anything worthwhile, what is the right role for Indians, for minorities in general?I did not learn the answer.I did learn that the author was angry about a lot of things, including past mistreatments, misunderstandings, male sexism, and overly made-up women.She had a right to be, but is that enough ?Should I start my own autobiography with a 90 page blast against Germans, Russians, Poles, and all the anti-Semites of this world ? (now you can buy "cute" little Jewish "puppets" in "free" Prague.Where the "Jews" have gone is another "question".) Anger gets me nowhere, I come back to my life unchanged.Is hers a message I wanted to spend a number of hours reading carefully ?In the end I felt that it was not. I read it carefully anyway.She's got talent, but anger management might have been wise.

A rich, beautifully written book
Hilden's memoir of growing up mixedblood in LA is a fascinating study of personal experience, images of Indian people in dominant white culture (the stuff on actor Jay Silverheels [Tonto] is especially compelling),AIM, andNative studies (and Native people) in the academy.Hilden's narrative isengaging, even riveting at times. This book is sad and funny. It reads likea good novel.

A rich, beautifully written book
Hilden's memoir of growing up mixedblood in LA is a fascinating study of personal experience, images of Indian people in dominant white culture (the stuff on actor Jay Silverheels [Tonto] is especially compelling),AIM, andNative studies (and Native people) in the academy.Hilden's narrative isengaging, even riveting at times. This book is sad and funny. It reads likea good novel.

wonderful
An astonishingly brave and courageous memoir that left me in an amazement of admiration. Patricia Hilden is certainly the most brilliant Native American theorist in the world today. As a white woman, I am simply in awethat such incredibly insightful work is being accomplished in spite ofeurocentric campuses and conservative white males. This is a truly greatbook. ... Read more

Product Description
Indian Nation documents the contributions of Native Americans to the notion of American nationhood and to concepts of American identity at a crucial, defining time in U.S. history. Departing from previous scholarship, Cheryl Walker turns the "usual" questions on their heads, asking not how whites experienced indigenous peoples, but how Native Americans envisioned the United States as a nation. This project unfolds a narrative of participatory resistance in which Indians themselves sought to transform the discourse of nationhood. Walker examines the rhetoric and writings of nineteenth-century Native Americans, including William Apess, Black Hawk, George Copway, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca. Demonstrating with unique detail how these authors worked to transform venerable myths and icons of American identity, Indian Nation chronicles Native American participation in the forming of an American nationalism in both published texts and speeches that were delivered throughout the United States. Pottawattomie Chief Simon Pokagon's "The Red Man's Rebuke," an important document of Indian oratory, is published here in its entirety for the first time since 1893. ... Read more

Product Description
In contrast to the popular cliché of the "stoic Indian," humor has always been important in Native North American cultures. Recent Native literature testifies to the centrality of this tradition. Yet literary criticism has so far largely neglected these humorous aspects, instead frequently choosing to concentrate on representations of trauma and cultural disruption, at the risk of reducing Native characters and Native cultures to the position of the tragic victim. This first comprehensive study explores the use of humor in today's Native writing, focusing on a wide variety of texts spanning all genres. It combines concepts from cultural studies and humor studies with approaches by Native thinkers and critics, analyzing the possible effects of humorous forms of representation on the self-image and identity formation of Native individuals and Native cultures. Humor emerges as an indispensable tool for engaging with existing stereotypes: Native writers subvert degrading clichés of "the Indian" from within, reimagining Nativeness in a celebration of laughing survivors, "decolonizing" the minds of both Native and non-native readers, and contributing to a renewal of Native cultural identity. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Native Studies both literary and cultural. Due to its encompassing approach, it will also provide a point of entry for the wider readership interested in contemporary Native writing. Eva Gruber is assistant professor in the American Studies section of the Department of Literature at the University of Constance, Germany. ... Read more

Product Description
This study deals with the development of different 19th and 20th century views of the Western-hemisphere "Indian". It pays special attention to Brazilian, Peruvian, French and English Canadian literatures and the genre of the novel as well as the historical background to the myths. ... Read more

Product Description
The Mesquakie peoples of present-day Iowa, historically known as the "Fox," are at the center of White Robe's Dilemma. An encounter with the French in the Great Lakes region, their original homeland, marked their first appearance in Euro-American history. Targeted for annihilation after they refused alliance with the French, they nevertheless endured, reappearing again and again in the records of the English and Americans as well as the French.

Over the years, the resistance of the Mesquakies has taken many forms, diplomatic and military, economic and cultural. They have rejected Christianity for the most part, and ridiculed the many anthropologists who keep coming to study them. A substantial number have managed, unlike virtually any other Indian group in the United States, to elude the reservation system by buying and main-taining their own settlement. Several have made important contributions to the literature in English by Indians, as has Black Hawk, of the confederate Sauk, whose autobiography has been in print since the Jacksonian period; William Jones, who became a student of renowned anthropologist Franz Boaz; and Ray Young Bear, author of the highly regarded autobiography, Black Eagle Child or The Facepaint Narratives.

In this intriguing study, Neil Schmitz imaginatively reconstructs and carefully analyzes the multiple legacies of the Mesquakie people.He shows how the complex story of their survival raises critical questions about the representation of Indians in American literature and history.

Although the Mesquakies are central to the book, Schmitz ranges widely through American literature both by and about Indians. Chapters on Standing Bear and Black Elk reopen the issue of agency and status, and reposition their tribal history. Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor and Elaine Goodale Eastman's Sister of the Sioux are given extensive readings. In pointed example and comparison, the author's broad knowledge of American literature repeatedly shows itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good critical theory for teaching Native American Literature
This book is not only very informative in conveying the issues that Native Americans dealt with as a people, but, inadvertently,becomes extremely important for formulating questions/problems/theories one might ask when teaching Native American literature in a high school or college-level setting.White Robe's Dilemma can be considered one of the first in the way of ground-breaking work done in this particular area of American Literature.In that sense, then, it is true that the author, Neil Schmitz, "distinguishes himself" by way of being one of the first to actively contribute to the critical theory that tackles the problems of teaching Native American literature and culture in a literature class.Yet Schmitz, as an author, does not have to distinguish himself in the literary field.His work is renowned in the English critical literary field via his scholarly journal articles as well as for his authoritative, critical analysis of one of literature's most complex characters, Huck Finn, in his book, Huck and Alice:Humorous Writing in American Literature, not to mention the fact that he is a well-respected book reviewer for the Buffalo newspapers, an excellent lecturer, and has received awards for teaching excellence.

I agree with the man whose review stated that this "volume is a 'must' for anyone interested in tribal history."My opinion/recommendation about this book is that anyone interested in teaching Native American Literature should have this text as a guideline.

Good critical theory for teaching Native American Literature
This book in not only very informative in conveying the issues that Native Americans dealt with as a people, but, also (inadvertently), becomes extremely important for formulating questions/problems/theories one might ask when teaching Native American Literature in a high school or college-level setting.White Robe's Dilemma can be considered one of the first in the way of ground-breaking work done in this particular area of American Literature. In that sense, then, it is true that the author, Neil Schmitz, "distinguishes himself" by way of being one of the first to actively contribute to the critical theory that tackles the problems of teaching about Native American literature and culture in a Literature class.Yet Schmitz, as an author, does not have to distinquish himself in the literary field; his work is renowned in the English critical literary field via his scholarly journal articles as well as for his authoritative, critical analysis of one of literature's most complex characters, Huck Finn, in his book, Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Literature, not to mention the facts the he is a well-respected book reviewer for the Buffalo newspapers, an excellent lecturer, and has received awards for teaching excellence.

I agree with the man whose review stated this "volume is a 'must' for anyone interested in tribal history."My opinion about this book is that anyone interested in teaching Native American Literature should have this text as a guideline.

White Man Write Long Book.
I guess if you're an insecure white guy who wants to distinguish himself from other white guys, then you write about Native Americans! What a niche. But the nothingness shows through.

How?
Rich in its accounting for the often surprising details, the necessary 'facts' (among them much newly discovered material), sovereign in its generalizing interpretations, elegant in its presentation, and revisionist in its central thesis, this volume is a 'must' for anyone interested in tribal history. ... Read more