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Native American Women's Writing: An Anthology c. 1800 - 1924
This ground-breaking anthology establishes the tradition of early Native American women's writing within American literature and American women's history. With a regionally diverse group of writers, this richly interwoven collection explores in depth the work of well-known figures such as Pauline Johnson, Sarah Winnemucca and Zitkala-ea, as well as less familiar writers such as Narcissa Owen, Buffalo Bird Woman, Mary Jemison, Ora Eddleman Reed, Sophia Alice Callahan, Owl Woman and Annette Leevier. Anonymously authored "women's texts" are also included, along with writing by children and young adults. Karen Kilcup challenges traditional mainstream notions of what constitutes literature, including political, historical, and autobiographical writing alongside more familiarly "aesthetic" forms like romantic poetry, short fiction and spiritual literature. As well as representing traditional oral narratives, the collection invites readers to hear the "translation" of orality into written forms. Brief headnotes outline the writers' lives and indicate connections between and among the writers. The volume also includes brief bibliographies of primary and secondary materials for each writer. A key text for the classroom, Native American Women's Writing: An Anthology c. 1800-1924 offers an inviting wealth of newly discovered material for scholars and general readers alike.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 1991
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April 20, 2022
Editing job isn't the best here -- I rag on Book Historians all the time and they can a bit stuffy for sure, but sometimes like this you need them. There are some technical and formatting issues imo where it could be put together on the page better, but what's really a problem is the headnotes that really go out of their way sometimes to dismiss the impact of White voices as mediating the word/text coming form Indigenous women. This is a fact of the 19thC, and downplaying it in the service of elevating Indigenous voices obscures what we're really getting here and who's speaking (b/c, at least in this context, it kinda really does matter who's speaking). In any case, this was put out in 1991, so ig before all the good research around these book history things? I don't feel like tracking down a literary timeline to make a point, but yeah -- a bit disappointing esp b/c this is literally the only anthology of it's kind out there so it's what we got.
Displaying 1 of 1 review