Synopses & Reviews
Unlike most anthologies that present a single story from many writers, this volume offers an in-depth sampling of two or three stories by a select number of both famous and emergent Native women writers. Here you will find much-loved stories (many made easily accessible for the first time)
and vibrant new stories by such well-known contemporary Native American writers as Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, and Leslie Marmon Silko as well as the fresh voices of emergent writers such as Reid Gomez and Beth Piatote.
Although diverse in style, language, and tone, all of these stories are reckonings with the brutal history of colonization and its ongoing consequences: they reveal Native epistemologies; testify to historic wrongs; and insist upon an accounting. A reckoning requires diving inward and
resurfacing with new insights. These stories share an understanding of Native women's lives in their various modes of loss and struggle, resistance and acceptance, and rage and compassion, ultimately highlighting the individual and collective will to endure. These contemporary stories reflect
cycles--mythic cycles, life cycles, cycles of resistance, and healing cycles--that insure Native survival. These are the stories told and retold by Native women who refuse to be silenced.
Their collection celebrates survival and provides readers with an essential new resource.
Synopsis
The fifteen Native women writers in
Reckonings document transgenerational trauma, yet they also celebrate survival. Their stories are vital testaments of our times. Unlike most anthologies that present a single story from many writers, this volume offers a sampling of two to three stories by a select number of both famous and lesser known Native women writers in what is now the United States. Here you will find much-loved stories, many made easily accessible for the first time, and vibrant new stories by well-known contemporary Native American writers as well as fresh emergent voices. These stories share an understanding of Native women's lives in their various modes of loss and struggle, resistance and acceptance, and rage and compassion, ultimately highlighting the individual and collective will to endure against all odds.
Reckonings features short stories by: Paula Gunn Allen, Kimberly M. Blaeser, Beth E. Brant, Anita Endrezze, Louise Erdrich, Diane Glancy, Reid Gómez, Janet Campbell Hale, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Misha Nogha, Beth H. Piatote, Patricia Riley, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Anna Lee Walters.
About the Author
Hertha D. Sweet Wong is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of
Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography; editor of
Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: A Casebook; and co-editor with John Elder of
Family of Earth and Sky: Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World.
Jana Sequoya Magdaleno lives in Northern California where her focus is on Native community health and healing practices.
Lauren Stuart Muller teaches at City College of San Francisco, where she chairs the Interdisciplinary Studies Department. She is the editor of June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint.
Table of Contents
Paula Gunn Allen
"Burned Alive in the Blues", "Deer Woman"
Beth E. Brant
"Turtle Gal", "Swimming Upstream"
Diane Glancy
"minimal ndian", "Stamp Dance", "An American Proverb"
Anna Lee Walters
"Buffalo Wallow Woman", "Las Vegas, New Mexico July 1969", "Apparitions"
Janet Campbell Hale
"Claire"
Linda Hogan
"Descent", "Bush's Mourning Feast"
Leslie Marmon Silko
"Storyteller","Mistaken Identity"/"Old Pancakes"
Patricia Riley
"Damping Down the Road", "Wisteria"
Joy Harjo
"The Reckoning", "the crow and the snake", "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky", "The Flood", "Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century"
Anita Endrezze
"Grandfather Sun Falls in Love with a Moon-Faced Woman", "The Humming of Stars and Bees and Waves"
Louise Erdrich
"Le Mooz", "Summer 1913/Miskomini-geezis/Raspberry Summer", "Almost
Soup"/"Lazy Stitch"
Kimberly M. Blaeser
"Like Some Old Story", "Growing Things"
Misha
"Memekwesiw", "Sakura"
Beth H. Piatote
"Beading Lesson", "Life-Size Indian"
Reid Gomez
"electric gods", "Touch. Touch. Touching."