Arnold Krupat

I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers

A rich diversity of attitude, experience, and literary style can be seen in I Tell You Now. For these Native American writers, being caught between two cultures has sharpened the struggle for self-identity and a sense of self-worth. They describe their bittersweet memories of childhood and family life, their fight against prejudice and poverty, their triumph over personal problems, their role models and schooling, their reverence for the land and anger over the rape of it, and their sources of artistic inspiration. Metaphorically or literally, they do go home again--to a proud and dignified cultural heritage. And the vehicle for these inheritors of an oral tradition is the written word.The contributors are Mary TallMountain, Ralph Salisbury, Maurice Kenny, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Carter Revard, Jim Barnes, Gerald Vizenor, Jack D. Forbes, Duane Niatum, Paula Gunn Allen, Jimmie Durham, Diane Glancy, Simon J. Ortiz, Joseph Bruchac, Barney Bush, Linda Hogan, Wendy Rose, and Joy Harjo.In their introduction, the editors, Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat, trace the history of Native American autobiography in its various forms.

Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner and Its Audiences

606 I’d like to thank my graduate research assistant, Jaime Warburton, for all sorts of help with this essay. 1. Although there are manymore differences than similarities between the work of the early years of the Native American Renaissance (1968 is the publication date of N. ScottMomaday’s novel,House Made of Dawn [New York, 1968], and 1969 is the year it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction) and the efflorescence of Native American literatures since then, the phraseNative American Renaissance, first used by Kenneth Lincoln in hisNative American Renaissance (Berkeley, 1983), has become a commonplace. Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner and Its Audiences

The Turn to the Native: Studies in Criticism and Culture@@@Feminist Readings of Native American Literature: Coming to Voice

Who in a society can speak, and under what circumstances? These questions are at the heart of both Native American literature and feminist literary and cultural theory. Despite the recent explosion of publication in each of these fields, almost nothing has been written to date that explores the links between the two. With Feminist Readings of Native American Literature, Kathleen Donovan takes an important first step in examining how studies in these two fields inform and influence one another. Focusing on the works of N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, Paula Gunn Allen, and others, Donovan analyzes the texts of these well-known writers, weaving a supporting web of feminist criticism throughout. With careful and gracefully offered insights, the book explores the reciprocally illuminating nature of culture and gender issues. The author demonstrates how Canadian women of mixed-blood ancestry achieve a voice through autobiographies and autobiographical novels. Using a framework of feminist reader response theory, she considers an underlying misogyny in the writings of N. Scott Momaday. And in examining commonalities between specific cultures, she discusses how two women of color, Paula Gunn Allen and Toni Morrison, explore representations of femaleness in their respective cultures. By synthesizing a broad spectrum of critical writing that overlaps womens voices and Native American literature, Donovan expands on the frame of dialogue within feminist literary and cultural theory. Drawing on the related fields of ethnography, ethnopoetics, ecofeminism, and post-colonialism, Feminist Readings of Native American Literature offers the first systematic study of the intersection between two dynamic arenas in literary studies today.

Hopi Boarding-School Narratives: Edmund Nequatewa's Born a Chief

ABSTRACT Although reference has been made to the “canonical corpus” of “Hopi autobiography,” it is a canon little known to students of American autobiography. This essay studies Edmund Nequatewas life story, Born a Chief (1993), focusing on its representation of Nequatewas experiences of government boarding school both on and off the Hopi Reservation.