Synopses & Reviews
The Cold-and-Hunger Dance is an imaginative and honest account of Diane Glancy's journeys to and from the margins of memory, everyday life, and different cultural worlds that combine her Cherokee heritage and her Christian faith. Along the way, familiar images and concepts are juxtaposed to create a literary terrain that is both engaging and unsettling: the Bible and Black Elk Speaks converse; Glancy's dispute with a local bakery is played out as if on a world stage of warring nations; eggs and cultural identity implicate each other; and lost Native languages speak powerfully through their silences to modern Native writers. The creative twists and darting metaphoric excursions engendered by this journey provide an intimate glimpse into the process and problematics of language for modern Native authors.
Review
"The Cold-and-Hunger Dance . . . moves on the double piston of acceptance and rejection. Like words in her stories, she finds her identity in the dialogic relationship between presence and absence. She embraces words and adds voice to many voices to condone the way she has been treated as a 'mixed-blood' Cherokee, Christian woman writer. One must say, Glancy, in her effort, surely has earned a place in the boat where every indigenous person of the continent shivers from a common cold and needs to participate in a revitalizing dance."and#8212;Red Ink
Review
"Glancy's is a major voice in the continuing process by which the complex interrelationship of American Indian culture to the broader American culture is working itself out, and The Cold-and-Hunger Dance must be read by everyone to whom that subject matters."and#8212;World Literature Today
Review
"'I am a marginal voice in several worlds,' explains Glancy in this collection of essays and poems that interweave her mixed-blood Cherokee heritage with her strong Christian beliefs. Her writing, she emphasizes, provides the matrix that makes the disparate parts of her life one story. Through the work gathered here, the reader is allowed to examine the life of the 'other' that Glancy has forged for herself as a writer."and#8212;Library Journal
About the Author
Diane Glancy is a professor of English at Macalester College. She is the author of the novel Designs of the Night Sky and Claiming Breath, both published by the University of Nebraska Press.