Red on red : Native American literary separatism / Craig S. Womack.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Womack, Craig S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Indian authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Indian authors.

Group identity in literature.

Indians in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 336 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [1999]

Summary:

How can a square peg fit into a round hole? It can't. How can a door be unlocked with a pencil? It can't. How can Native literature be read applying conventional postmodern literary criticism? It can't.

That is Craig Womack's argument in Red on Red. Indian communities have their own intellectual and cultural traditions that are well equipped to analyze Native literary production. These traditions should be the eyes through which the texts are viewed. To analyze a Native text with the methods currently dominant in the academy, according to the author, is like studying the stars with a magnifying glass.

In an unconventional and piercingly humorous appeal, Womack creates a dialogue between essays on Native literature and fictional letters from Creek characters who comment on the essays. Through this conceit, Womack demonstrates an alternative approach to American Indian literature, with the letters serving as a "Creek chorus" that offers answers to the questions raised in his more traditional essays. Topics range from a comparison of contemporary oral versions of Creek stories and the translations of those stories dating back to the early twentieth century, to a queer reading of Cherokee author Lynn Riggs's play The Cherokee Night.

Womack argues that the meaning of works by native peoples inevitably changes through evaluation by the dominant culture. Red on Red is a call for self-determination on the part of Native writers and a demonstration of an important new approach to studying Native works -- one that engages not only the literature, but also the community from which the work grew.

Contents:

Introduction: American Indian Literary Self-Determination 1

1 The Creek Nation 25

2 Reading the Oral Tradition for Nationalist Themes: Beyond Ethnography 51

3 In the Storyway 75

4 Alice Callahan's Wynema: A Fledgling Attempt 107

5 Fus Fixico: A Literary Voice against the Extinction of Tribal Government 131

6 Louis Oliver: Searching for a Creek Intellectual Center 187

7 Joy Harjo: Creek Writer from the End of the Twentieth Century 223

8 Lynn Riggs as Code Talker: Toward a Queer Oklahomo Theory and the Radicalization of Native American Studies 271.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-318) and index.

ISBN:

0816630224

0816630232

OCLC:

41977152