The Invention of Native American LiteratureIn an original, widely researched, and accessibly written book, Robert Dale Parker helps redefine the study of Native American literature by focusing on issues of gender and literary form. Among the writers Parker highlights are Thomas King, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ray A. Young Bear, some of whom have previously received little scholarly attention. Parker proposes a new history of Native American literature by reinterpreting its concerns with poetry, orality, and Indian notions of authority. He also addresses representations of Indian masculinity, uncovering Native literature's recurring fascination with restless young men who have nothing to do, or who suspect or feel pressured to believe that they have nothing to do. The Invention of Native American Literature reads Native writing through a wide variety of shifting historical contexts. In its commitment to historicizing Native writing and identity, Parker's work parallels developments in scholarship on other minority literatures and is sure to provoke controversy. |
Contents
Tradition Invention and Aesthetics in Native American Literature and Literary Criticism | 1 |
Nothing to Do John Joseph Mathewss Sundown and Restless Young Indian Men | 19 |
Who Shot the Sheriff Storytelling Indian Identity and the Marketplace of Masculinity in DArcy McNickles The Surrounded | 51 |
Text Lines and Videotape Reinventing Oral Stories as Written Poems | 80 |
The Existential Surfboard and the Dream of Balance or To be there no authority to anything The Poetry of Ray A Young Bear | 101 |
The Reinvention of Restless Young Men Storytelling and Poetry in Leslie Marmon Silkos Ceremony and Thomas Kings Medicine River | 128 |
Material Choices American Fictions and the Postcanon | 168 |
Legs Sex Orgies Speed and Alcohol After Strange Gods John Joseph Mathewss Lost Generation Letter | 188 |
Notes | 195 |
| 215 | |
| 239 | |