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Nationhood and Improvised Belief in American Fiction highlights the ways religious belief and practice intersect with questions of national belonging in the work of major contemporary writers. Through readings of novels by Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Cristina Garcia, and others, this book argues that the representations of syncretic, culturally hybrid, and improvised forms of religious practice operate in these novels as critiques of exclusionary constructions of national identity, providing...

A casebook on Louise Erdrich's first novel, "Love Medicine", which came out in 1984 to instant national acclaim, winning a National Book Circle Critics Award and launching a tetralogy which it would take Erdrich ten years to complete. In its centrality to Native American literary tradition, "Love Medicine" is an uncompromising and irresistible portrait of a community till then too often portrayed in flat or comic terms.

“Between the high Sierras south from Yosemite—east and south over a very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death Valley, and on illimitably into the Mojave Desert” is the territory that Mary Austin calls the Land of Little Rain. In this classic collection of meditations on the wonders of this region, Austin generously shares “such news of the land, of its trails and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another.” Her vivid writings capture the landscape—from burnt hills to...

Following the structure of other titles in the Continuum Introductions to Literary Genres series, Native American Literatures includes: A broad definition of the genre and its essential elements. A timeline of developments within the genre. Critical concerns to bear in mind while reading in the genre. Detailed readings of a range of widely taught texts. In-depth analysis of major themes and issues. Signposts for further study within the genre. A summary of the most important criticism in the fie...

There are many parallels and some revealing differences in the encounter between, on the one hand, the Americans and various Indian tribes and, on the other, the Russians and some of the peoples of the Caucasus and Siberia. The enduring cultural consequences of these encounters provide a fruitful area of inquiry for the comparative examination of national images in literatures. The major focus on this study is the perceptions and literary portrayal of the Chechens by the Russians and the Navajos...

William Bradford, a leader among the Pilgrims, carefully recorded the voyage of the Mayflower and the daily life of Plymouth Colony in a work--part journal, part history--he titled Of Plimoth Plantation. This remarkable document is the authoritative chronicle of the Pilgrims' experiences as well as a powerful testament to the cultural and literary exchange that existed between the newly arrived Europeans and the Native Americans who were their neighbors and friends. It is well-documented that N...

Unsettled Solidarities examines contemporary Asian and Indigenous cross-representations within different settler states in the Americas. Quynh Nhu Le looks at literary works by both groups alongside public apologies, interviews, and hemispheric race theories to trace cross-community tensions and possibilities for solidarities amidst the uneven imposition of racialization and settler colonization. Contrasting texts such as Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men with Gerald Vizenor's Hiroshima Bugi, an...

Counterfeit Gentlemen is a stunning reappraisal of Southern manhood and identity that uses humor and humorists to carry the reader into the very heart of antebellum culture. What does it mean to be a man in the pre-Civil War South? And how can we answer the question from the perspective of the early twenty-first century? John Mayfield does so by revealing how early nineteenth-century Southern humorists addressed the anxieties felt by men seeking to chart a new path between the old honor culture...

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1999 Since the 1968 publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, a new generation of Native American storytellers has chosen writing over oral traditions. While their works have found an audience by observing many of the conventions of the mainstream novel, Native American written narrative has emerged as something distinct from the postmodern novel with which it is often compared. In Dreams of Fiery Stars, Catherine Rain...

In the 1930s Grey Owl was considered the foremost conservationist and nature writer in the world. He owed his fame largely to his four internationally bestselling books, which he supported with a series of extremely popular illustrated lectures across North America and Great Britain. His reputation was transformed radically, however, after he died in April 1938, and it was revealed that he was not of mixed Scottish-Apache ancestry, as he had often claimed, but in fact an Englishman named Archie...

Recreates the Sand Creek Massacre in which a Colorado militia force attacked a camp of Cheyenne, and shares the voices of soldiers, Indians, and other witnesses.

The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories by historian Hugh A. Dempsey presents tales from the Blackfoot tribe of the plains of northern Montana and southern Alberta. Drawn from Dempsey's fifty years of interviewing tribal elders and sifting through archives, the stories are about warfare, hunting, ceremonies, sexuality, the supernatural, and captivity, and they reflect the Blackfoot worldview and beliefs. This remarkable compilation of oral history and accounts from government officials,...