Native American Women Writers: Storytelling and Survivance

Catalog description

How do twentieth-century and contemporary Native American women writers pursue questions of historical memory in literature? What role do stories play in the transmission of history? How do they reflect the phenomenological and collective processes of memory? How do Native oral traditions challenge conventional definitions of authorship and text? We consider the ways these works draw on Native storytelling traditions with deep histories, enacting the form of cultural resistance that Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” and yielding novel experimentations with literary form. Many of the authors we read work to record or recreate history (Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove, and Diane Glancy), others offer new modes of historiography (Linda Hogan, Deborah Miranda), while others give old stories new meaning through contemporary literary forms (Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko). Many of these works depict spiritual or ancestral relationships to the land, and thus offer environmental critiques of American imperialism. They also explore stages and cycles of womanhood, including girlhood, coming-of-age, and motherhood. Memory, trauma, and poverty constitute another type of cycle these works engage. Together, these texts challenge hegemonic forms of history-making by drawing on indigenous epistemologies and feminist positionalities.