Henry Gordons World of Magic

Humor & Entertainment

Henry, Gordon

Puzzles & Games

Stoddart+publishing

Taking inspiration from traditional Anishinabe stories and drawing from his own family's storytelling tradition, Gordon Henry, Jr., has woven a tapestry of interlocking narratives in The Light People, a novel of surpassing emotional strength. His characters tell of their experiences, dreams, and visions in a multitude of literary styles and genres. Poetry, drama, legal testimony, letters, and essays combine with more conventional narrative techniques to create a multifaceted, deeply rooted, and vibrant portrait of the author's own tribal culture. Keenly aware of Eurocentric views of that culture, Henry offers a "corrective history" whose humor and wisdom transcend the merely political.In the contemporary Minnesota village of Four Bears, on the mythical Fineday Reservation, a young Chippewa boy named Oskinaway is trying to learn the whereabouts of his parents. His grandparents turn for help to a tribal elder, one of the light people, Jake Seed. Seed's assistant, a magician who performs at children's birthday parties, tells Oskinaway's family his story, which gives way to the stories of those he encounters. Narratives unfold into earlier narratives, spinning back in time and encompassing the intertwined lives of the Fineday Chippewas, eventually revealing the place of Oskinaway and his parents in a complex web of human relationships.Along the way we hear the story of Oshawanung, who fails to bury the amputated leg of Moses Four Bears. Years later, when his nephew sees the preserved leg on display in a museum, a legal battle over custody of the leg raises issues of cultural identity and the ownership and reburial of anthropological specimens. Issues of American Indian identity also inform the story of Elijah Cold Crow, who loses his voice after being punished at a boarding school where he is forbidden to speak his Native language, and the essays of Bombarto Rose, a mixed-blood whose attempts to understand his place between two cultures by means of coldly analytical European-style logic periodically erupt into traditional Ojibway poetic imagery.The blending of genres is a tradition of Native American literature; here Gordon Henry extends the technique into a virtuoso tour de force, mixing history with myth, essay with poetry, social science with fiction. His voice is original and engaging, and his stories are wise and moving parabIes.

The Light People: A Novel (American Indian Literature & Critical Studies Series)

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

United States

The Light People is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota. Major themes include Oskinaway’s search for his parents and the legal wrangling over the possession of a leg that has been removed from a tribal elder. Each story is linked to previous and successive stories to form a discourse on identity and cultural appropriation, all told with humor and wisdom. Taking inspiration from traditional Anishinabe stories and drawing from his own family's storytelling tradition, Gordon Henry, Jr., has woven a tapestry of interlocking narratives in The Light People, a novel of surpassing emotional strength. His characters tell of their experiences, dreams, and visions in a multitude of literary styles and genres. Poetry, drama, legal testimony, letters, and essays combine with more conventional narrative techniques to create a multifaceted, deeply rooted, and vibrant portrait of the author's own tribal culture. Keenly aware of Eurocentric views of that culture, Henry offers a "corrective history" where humor and wisdom transcend the political. In the contemporary Minnesota village of Four Bears, on the mythical Fineday Reservation, a young Chippewa boy named Oskinaway is trying to learn the whereabouts of his parents. His grandparents turn for help to a tribal elder, one of the light people, Jake Seed. Seed's assistant, a magician who performs at children's birthday parties, tells Oskinaway's family his story, which gives way to the stories of those he encounters. Narratives unfold into earlier narratives, spinning back in time and encompassing the intertwined lives of the Fineday Chippewas, eventually revealing the place of Oskinaway and his parents in a complex web of human relationships.

The Light People: A Novel

Contemporary

Michigan State University Press

Navajo (North American Indians Today)

North American Indians are not merely a historical topic. Instead, today's Native Americans are living, productive members of North American society. The contributions of the various Indian cultures enrich our lives in countless ways. For instance, "Indians have the strongest sense of place of anyone in the world," says Amy Mossett, a Native scholar (quoted in the New York Times). This sense of place is reflected in American Indians' connection to the Earth, an intimate relationship that has concrete implications for the way we handle environmental issues. Indians' connection to the traditions of their ancestors is also strong. At the same time, however, Native Americans are modern people confronting the challenges of today's world. They gain strength for the present from their deep foundations in the past. What's more, Native traditions and wisdom have much to offer us all. North American Indians Today portrays contemporary Indians within the present-day context of their relationship to their land, their past, their traditions, and their 21-st century realities. The heritage and history of each tribe is given as background to chapters on the current government, society, culture, religion, contributions, challenges, and goals of each tribe. Each volume was written with the help of Native people, and tribal leaders and scholars reviewed and approved the text for their tribes. The series consultant, a Native American expert from the University of Nebraska, ensured that the text is free from cultural bias. This series' respectful and accurate text, as well as the color photographs and Native artwork, will give readers a broader understanding of today's North American Indians, theirconnection to their land and their past, and their contributions to our modern-day world.

North American Indians Today

Children's Books

McIntosh, Kenneth

Sanna, Ellyn

Libal, Autumn

Libal, Joyce

Stewart, Philip

McIntosh, Marsha

Cornell, George L.

Lonehill, Karen

Geography & Cultures

Mason Crest

Presents the history of the Ojibwa/Chippewa people, discussing the social, cultural, and political changes that have occurred, and focusing on the preservation of tradition and plans for the future.

Ojibwa (North American Indians Today)

Teen & Young Adult

"Spirit Matters is haunted by people whose voices are so indelible they speak from a world beyond this one--a powerful country where stories are spells that inhabit the living. Gordon Henry has created a compelling, uncanny book."--Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Night Watchman, a novel\nA major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an American Book Award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies. 
In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, "Spirit Matters" invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.\nGordon Henry is an enrolled member/citizen of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota. He is also a Professor in the English Department at Michigan State University, where he teaches American Indian Literature and Creative Writing. He serves as Senior Editor of the American Indian Studies Series at Michigan State University Press. In 1995, Henry received an American Book Award for his novel the Light People and his poetry, fiction and essays have been published extensively in the U.S. and Europe. In 2004, he co-published an educational reader on Ojibwe people with George Cornell. In 2007, Henry published a mixed-genre collection, The Failure of Certain Charms, with Salt Publishing. More recently Henry’s writing has appeared in, Bob Seger’s House, (Wayne State University Press); Iperstoria, a literary journal from the University of Verona, Italy; Revolucion: A Cuban Journal, of Havana; New Poets of Native Nations; Poetry; Wassafiri; and When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2020) and Living Nations, Living Words (2021)--two poetry anthologies edited by Joy Harjo. He lives in Empire, Michigan.

Spirit Matters: White Clay, Red Exits, Distant Others

Poetry

Holy Cow! Press

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Books by Henry, Gordon