I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter: The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940-1965 (Plains Histories) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896726665 ISBN 13: 9780896726666

Publisher: Texas Tech University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Unusual book

About this title

Review:

"Now it is time for you to read the letters of Mari Sandoz. If it has been a clear summer day and it is near sundown, take this book and a cool drink outside and soak in the wisdom of a writer with a cause. - JOHN R. WUNDER, from the foreword"

From the Back Cover:

A voice as resonant as her love of the Plains, a commitment even deeper

Author Mari Sandoz was as passionate about Plains peoples as she was about language and literary acclaim. That the mastery of Crazy Horse’s biographer spilled into her zealous advocacy for Native Americans is scarcely surprising. An avid letter writer, Sandoz kept carbons of everything. Fortunately these came into the Sandoz Collection at the University of Nebraska Archives, organized by Kimberli Lee, foremost expert on Sandoz’s writings.

Through the activist correspondence, Lee traces an intimate, long-standing interaction with tribal communities, for whom Sandoz vigorously sought social justice. Sandoz was not above using her celebrity as leverage, yet the letters prove her a respectful and responsible ally, sensitive to the communities’ best interests and solicitous of Native leaders.

Though Sandoz richly deserves attention, recent scholarship is scant. In arranging and analyzing this correspondence, Lee reinstates Sandoz as one of the most significant non-Native chroniclers and advocates for Plains Indian cultures. There is much here for historians and other scholars of American Indian, Great Plains, rhetorical, and women’s studies. Yet Sandoz’s wider fan base should not be surprised to hearken to a voice and ardor they will find well familiar.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0896726665
• ISBN 13: 9780896726666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216
• Editor: Kimberli A. Lee