New voices in Native American literary criticism

About this book

New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism brings together more than twenty Native American and non-Native American critics working in the United States and abroad to explore the oral and textual expressions of Native Americans past and present. Many of the contributors represent a new generation of literary criticism: younger scholars and experts in the field who have not, for the most part, been published widely. The essays discuss Inuit writing, Hopi clowning, Huichol funeral oration, contemporary poetry in the ancient language of Nahuatl, and the narratives of Ojibwe, Koasati, and Shuar storytellers. Contributors also examine the works of Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Mourning Dove, Todd Downing, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, and other writers. A final section of essays or "ethnocritiques" examines Western and non-Western model of knowledge and expression, and contrasting approaches to translation and transliteration. Reflecting a variety of disciplines - including anthropology, linguistics, and literature - this volume will be of interest to nonspecialists as well as specialists in American Indian literatures. More than ten tribes are represented, encompassing regions from South and Central America, Mexico, and the American Southwest and Southeast north to the Canadian Arctic.