Websites of Native American Authors
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
Native American Myths & Legends by Call Number: E98.F6 M36 2018
Write It on Your Heart by
Write It on Your Heart is a celebration of the late Harry Robinson, one of the great storytellers of the Interior Salish people of North America. Collected over a ten-year period, the stories selected for this volume tell from a First Nations point of view about the origin of the world; the time of the animal people; the time before the coming of the white man; the stories of power; the prophet cult and its predictions of profound cultural and economic change; and the post-contact world. The collection ends with Robinson's own version of "Puss in Boots," true in every psychological detail to the European story, but set in the ranching country of the Similkameen Valley. This collection is unique in that it chronicles not only the treasure house of a vibrant First Nations culture, but also the sweeping changes which took place in that culture as it began to interact with the new colonists who introduced a foreign language and writing to the mythic world of Coyote, Fox and Owl. As more and more of his listeners, First Nations included, understood only English, Robinson began to tell his old stories in this new language in order to keep them alive. By the time Wendy Wickwire met him in 1977, he had become as skilled a storyteller in English as he had been in his mother tongue. Robinson knew that the profound cultural changes which had taken place in his lifetime would continue and took to heart the matter of preserving the storytelling tradition. With his approval, Wickwire recorded his stories and brought them together in this critically acclaimed collection. Write It on Your Heart stands as a monument to the epic world of Harry Robinson, ensuring its survival in the many generations to come.
Call Number: E99.O35 R63 2014
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Online from CCBC Libraries
We Are Water Protectors by
Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal #1 New York Times Bestseller Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade. Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all . . . When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth And poison her people's water, one young water protector Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.
Call Number: JUV.PZ7.L6623 We 2020
The Dream of a Broken Field by
The dream of a broken field is to bear crops. The dream of a broken history is to create meaning, to find among the fragments a way to tell the story of a life. It is this dream that Diane Glancy pursues here, through essays on writing, faith, family, teaching, and retirement. Blending a poet's vision and a storyteller's voice, the result is at once a virtuoso work of creative nonfiction and an exploration of that genre's outer limits by one of the foremost voices in Native American literature today. Uneasily and yet firmly balanced between European and Native cultures--English and German on her mother's side, Cherokee on her father's--Glancy continues to search for a language that articulates the Native experience with both the fullness of tradition and the lapses inherent in a broken heritage. Accordingly, The Dream of a Broken Field offers a narrative that pauses and circles, connects and changes direction and travels great distances with grace only to stop sharply for a startling insight. Writing of weekend trips and long journeys, of natural landscapes and burial mounds, of Native American cosmology and a Christian upbringing, of Native American boarding schools and indigenous writers in American universities, Glancy captures the opposing demands of a hurried life and the timeless reflections of a history forever unfolding.
Publication Date: 2011
Native American Writers by
Native Americans have produced some of the most powerful and lyrical literature ever written in North America. This volume examines some of the finest Native American writers, including Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Sherman Alexie, N. Scott Momaday, Samsom Occom, Zitkala-Sa, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Yale literature professor Harold Bloom introduces this new edition, which also features a bibliography, a chronology, and an index for easy reference. This title in the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Views"" series presents a well-rounded critical portrait of an influential group of writers by examining their body of work through eight to 12 full-length essays.
Publication Date: 2010-05-01
Reading Native American Literature by
Native American literature explores divides between public and private cultures, ethnicities and experience. In this volume, Joseph Coulombe argues that Native American writers use diverse narrative strategies to engage with readers and are 'writing for connection' with both Native and non-Native audiences. Beginning with a historical overview of Native American literature, this book presents focused readings of key texts including: * N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn * Leslie Marmon Silko'sCeremony * Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart * James Welch's Fool's Crow * Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven * Linda Hogan's Power. Suggesting new ways towards a sensitive engagement with tribal cultures, this book provides not only a comprehensive introduction to Native American literature but also a critical framework through which it may be read. lt;P> Suggesting new ways towards a sensitive engagement with tribal cultures, this book provides not only a comprehensive introduction to Native American literature but also a critical framework through which it may be read.
Publication Date: 2011
Sherman Alexie by
Sherman Alexie is, by many accounts, the most widely read American Indian writer in the United States and likely in the world. A literary polymath, Alexie's nineteen published books span a variety of genres and include his most recent National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Now, for the first time, a volume of critical essays is devoted to Alexie's work both in print and on the big screen. Editors Jeff Berglund and Jan Roush have assembled twelve leading scholars of American Indian literature to provide new perspectives on a writer with his finger on the pulse of America. Interdisciplinary in their approach to Alexie's work, these essays cover the writer's entire career, and are insightful and accessible to scholars and lay readers alike. This volume is a worthy companion to the work of one of our nations's most recognized contemporary voices.
Publication Date: 2010
Sky Loom by
Sky Loom offers a dazzling introduction to Native American myths, stories, and songs drawn from previous collections by acclaimed translator and poet Brian Swann. With a general introduction by Swann, Sky Loom is a stunning collection that provides a glimpse into the intricacies and beauties of story and myth, placing them in their cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts. Each of the twenty-six selections is translated and introduced by a well-known expert on Native oral literatures and offers entry into the cultures and traditions of several different tribes and bands, including the Yupiit and the Tlingits of the polar North; the Coast Salish and the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest; the Navajos, the Pimas, and the Yaquis of the Southwest; the Lakota Sioux and the Plains Crees of the Great Plains; the Ojibwes of the Great Lakes; the Naskapis and the Eastern Crees of the Hudson Bay area in Canada; and the Munsees of the Northeast. Sky Loom takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey through literary traditions older than the "discovery" of the New World.
Publication Date: 2014-11-01
Understanding Louise Erdrich by
In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich's oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children's literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry. Kurup elucidates Erdrich's historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich's writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich's writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.
Publication Date: 2016
The Spoken World of Stories and Poetry
On the Shelf from CCBC Libraries
Postcolonial Love Poem by
Natalie Diaz's highly anticipated follow-up toWhen My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz's brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages--bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers--be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: "Let me call my anxiety,desire, then. / Let me call it,a garden." In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: "I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging:Let me be lonely but not invisible."Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope--in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.
Call Number: PS3604.I186 A6 2020
The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature by
Invisible, marginal, expected - these words trace the path of recognition for American Indian literature written in English since the late eighteenth century. This Companion chronicles and celebrates that trajectory by defining relevant institutional, historical, cultural, and gender contexts, by outlining the variety of genres written since the 1770s, and also by focusing on significant authors who established a place for Native literature in literary canons in the 1970s (Momaday, Silko, Welch, Ortiz, Vizenor), achieved international recognition in the 1980s (Erdrich), and performance-celebrity status in the 1990s (Harjo and Alexie). In addition to the seventeen chapters written by respected experts - Native and non-Native; American, British and European scholars - the Companion includes bio-bibliographies of forty authors, maps, suggestions for further reading, and a timeline which details major works of Native American literature and mainstream American literature, as well as significant social, cultural and historical events. An essential overview of this powerful literature.
Call Number: PS153.I52 C36 2007
Coyote Stories by
A powerful force and yet the butt of humor, the coyote figure runs through the folklore of many American Indian tribes. He can be held up as a "terrible example" of conduct, a model of what not to do, and yet admired for a careless. anarchistic energy that suggests unlimited possibilities. Mourning Dove, an Okanagan, knewnbsp;him well from the legends handed down by her people. She preserved them for posterity in Coyote Stories, originally published in 1933. Here is Coyote, the trickster, the selfish individualist, the imitator, the protean character who indifferently puts the finishing touches on a world soon to receive human beings. And here is Mole, his long-suffering wife, and all the other Animal People, including Fox, Chipmunk, Owl-Woman, Rattlesnake, Grizzly Bear, Porcupine, and Chickadee. Here it is revealed why Skunk's tail is black and white, why Spider has such long legs, why Badger is so humble, and why Mosquito bites people. These entertaining, psychologically compelling stories will be welcomed by a wide spectrum of readers. Jay Miller has supplied an introduction and notes for this Bison Books edition and restored chapters that were deleted from the original.
Call Number: E99.O35 M68 1990
Dee Brown's Folktales of the Native American by
This comprehensive collection of Native American folklore draws on a unique oral tradition, illuminating for students the very roots of Native American culture. Gathered from numerous tribes--Seneca, Hopi, Navaho, Creek, Cheyenne, Cherokee, and Blackfoot--these thirty-six stories, passed down through generations, are narrated by Dee Brown as they might be told around a campfire today. Updated for the modern reader, these tales capture the true spirit and flavor of Native American Mythology. With a new preface written by the author especially for this edition and attractive line illustrations by Native American Louis Mofsie, this unique is essential reading for a new generation of students interested in Native American culture and history, mythology and folklore, and cultural history.
Call Number: E98.F6 B8595 2008
In the Presence of the Sun by
In the Presence of the Sun is a celebration of works of extraordinary range by the accomplished author and artist N. Scott Momaday. A glorious testament to our Native American past, this collection of thirty years of work from 1961 through 1991 is a concentration of riches and proof of the persistence of the human spirit. This volume features over seventy poems, sixteen newstories about the great tribal shields that delve into the deeper meaning of legend, love, and loss, as well as a striking section devoted to Billy the Kid. The words, poems, and stories are enhanced by Momaday's own line drawings and paintings. Momaday's voice is ancestral and contemporary, profoundly American and genuinely universal. Here, at his best, is a truly distinguished poet, storyteller, and artist.
Call Number: PS3563 .O47 I5 1993
Native American Literature by
North American Indigenous literature began over thirty thousand years ago when Indigenous people began telling stories of emergence and creation, journey and quest, and heroism and trickery. By setting Indigenous literature in historical moments, Sean Teuton skillfully traces its evolutionfrom the ancient role of bringing rain and healing the body, to its later purpose in resisting European invasion and colonization, into its current place as a world literature that confronts dominance while celebrating the imagination and resilience of Indigenous lives.By the time Europeans arrived in North America Indigenous people already understood the power of written language and the need to transmit philosophy, history, and literature across generations and peoples. Seeking out multiple literary forms such as sermon, poetry, and novel to serve differingworldviews Indigenous authors have shaped their writing into North American Indigenous literature as we recognize it today. In this lucid narrative, Sean Teuton leads readers into Indigenous worlds. He describes the invention of a written Indigenous language, the first Indigenous language newspaper,and the literary occupation of Alcatraz Island. Along the way readers encounter the diversity of Indigenous peoples who, owing to their differing lands, livelihoods, and customs, molded literature to a nation's specific needs. As Teuton shows, Indigenous literature is one of the best places forunderstanding Indigenous views about land and society and the role of humanity in the cosmos. In turning to celebrated contemporary authors such as Thomas King, Leslie Silko, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and James Welch, Teuton demonstrates that, like Indigenous people, Indigenous literaturecontinues to survive because it adapts, both honoring the past and reaching for the future.ABOUT THE SERIES:The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to makeinteresting and challenging topics highly readable.
Call Number: PS153.I52 T465 2018
There There by
"This is a novel about what it means to inhabit a land both yours and stolen from you, to simultaneously contend with the weight of belonging and unbelonging. There is an organic power to this book--a revelatory, controlled chaos. Tommy Orange writes the way a storm makes landfall." --Omar El Akkad, author of American War Tommy Orange's "groundbreaking, extraordinary" (The New York Times) There There is the "brilliant, propulsive" (People Magazine) story of twelve unforgettable characters, Urban Indians living in Oakland, California, who converge and collide on one fateful day. It's "the year's most galvanizing debut novel" (Entertainment Weekly). As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and loss. There There is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. It's "masterful . . . white-hot . . . devastating" (The Washington Post) at the same time as it is fierce, funny, suspenseful, thoroughly modern, and impossible to put down. Here is a voice we have never heard--a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. Tommy Orange has written a stunning novel that grapples with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide. This is the book that everyone is talking about right now, and it's destined to be a classic.
Call Number: PS3615.R32 T48 2018
War Dances by
Fresh off his National Book Award win, Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories that explores the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large. With unparalleled insight into the minds of artists, laborers, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change. In a bicoastal journey through the consequences of both simple and monumental life choices, Alexie introduces us to personal worlds as they transform beyond return. In the title story, a famous writer must decide how to care for his distant father who is slowly dying a "natural Indian death" from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor. Alexie dissects a vintage-clothing store owner's failing marriage and his courtship of a married photographer in various airports across the country; what happens when a politician's son commits a hate crime; and how a young boy discovers his self-worth while writing obituaries for his local newspaper. Brazen and wise,War Dances takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. This provocative new work is Alexie at the height of his powers.
Call Number: PS3551.L35774 W37 2009
