The Invention of Native American Literature: A New Approach to Dealing with Hostile, Threatening, and Uncivil Behavior - Hardcover

Parker, Robert Dale

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080144067X ISBN 13: 9780801440670

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In an original, widely researched, and accessibly written book, Robert Dale Parker helps redefine the study of Native American literature by focusing on issues of gender and literary form. Among the writers Parker highlights are Thomas King, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ray A. Young Bear, some of whom have previously received little scholarly attention.Parker proposes a new history of Native American literature by reinterpreting its concerns with poetry, orality, and Indian notions of authority. He also addresses representations of Indian masculinity, uncovering Native literature's recurring fascination with restless young men who have nothing to do, or who suspect or feel pressured to believe that they have nothing to do. The Invention of Native American Literature reads Native writing through a wide variety of shifting historical contexts. In its commitment to historicizing Native writing and identity, Parker's work parallels developments in scholarship on other minority literatures and is sure to provoke controversy.

About this title

Review:

"The Invention of Native American Literature seeks to redirect the current theoretical and thematic foci of Native American literary studies away from the essentialist, authoritative directions of the canonical past into a more postmodern understanding of the field and its relationship to international literary studies. It is a compelling, original, meticulously researched, and strikingly honest text, and I would recommend it to anyone working in the field.... Parker's text is also valuable for its emphasis on the works of a diverse range of Native writers, including Great Plains authors John Joseph Matthews and D'Arcy McNickle, as well as Ray A. Young Bear, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Thomas King."

--Lori Burlingame "Great Plains Quarterly "

"This clearly written and informative critique is strongly recommended for all academic and large public libraries and for public libraries with Native American literature collections."

--Library Journal

Synopsis:

While "Native American literature has arrived," bestselling authors such as Sherman Alexie have obscured other Indian writers per Parker (English, U. of Illinois). He discusses themes in works of John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickles, Ray A. Young Bear, Leslie Marmon Silko, Thomas King, and the reinvention of oral stories as written poems. Annotati

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 080144067X
• ISBN 13: 9780801440670
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264