Focusing on published works by novelists N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, D'Arcy McNickle, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and other Native American authors, the critical essays in this collection examine translation and representation in tribal literatures, comic and tragic world views, and trickster discourse.

Narrative Chance (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Volume 8)

Literature & Fiction

Vizenor

History & Criticism

Gerald Vizenor gives life to traditional tribal stories by presenting them in a new perspective: he challenges the idyllic perception of rural life, offering in its stead an unusual vision of survival in the cities-the sanctuaries for humans and animals. It is a tribal vision, a quest for liberation from forces that would deny the full realization of human possibilities. In this modern world his characters insist upon survival through an imaginative affirmation of the self. In Dead Voices Vizenor, using tales drawn from traditional tribal stories, illuminates the centuries of conflict between American Indians and Europeans, or "wordies." Bagese, a tribal woman transformed into a bear, has discovered a new urban world, and in a cycle of tales she describes this world from the perspective of animals-fleas, squirrels, mantis, crows, beavers, and finally Trickster, Vizenor’s central and unifying figure. The stories reveal unpleasant aspects of the dominate culture and American Indian culture such as the fur trade, the educational system, tribal gambling, reservation life, and in each the animals, who represent crossbloods, connect with their tribal traditions, often in comic fashion. As in his other fiction, Vizenor upsets our ideas of what fiction should be. His plot is fantastic; his story line is a roller-coaster ride requiring that we accept the idea of transformation, a key element in all his work. Unlike other Indian novelists, who use the novel as a means of cultural recovery, Vizenor finds the crossblood a cause for celebration.

Dead Voices (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Volume 2)

United States

Centered on the volatile issue of the repatriation of Native American skeletal remains, Chancers follows a group of student Solar Dancers who set out to resurrect native remains housed in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Possessed by the demonic wiindigoo, a mythic monster, the Solar Dancers, in a gruesome ritual, sacrifice faculty and administrators associated with the collection and storage of native remains. The Dancers replace stored native skulls with those of the academics, and the resurrected natives become the Chancers. The Round Dancers, humane and erotic trickster figures, are natural opponents of the morbid Solar Dancers. The war between the two groups comes to a comic conclusion at a graduation ceremony attended by Pocahontas; Phoebe Hearst; Alfred Kroeber, the anthropologist; Ishi, the native who actually lived and worked in the university museum; and many Chancers.

Chancers: A Novel (Volume 36 in The American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vizenor. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vizenor

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vizenor. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Narrative Chance (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Volume 8)

Dead Voices (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Volume 2)

Chancers: A Novel (Volume 36 in The American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series)