Synopses & Reviews
An entirely new approach to reading, understanding, and enjoying Native American fictionThis book has been written with the narrow conviction that if Native American literature is worth thinking about at all, it is worth thinking about as literature. The vast majority of thought that has been poured out onto Native American literature has puddled, for the most part, on how the texts are positioned in relation to history or culture.
Rather than create a comprehensive cultural and historical genealogy for Native American literature, David Treuer investigates a selection of the most important Native American novels and, with a novelist's eye and a critic's mind, examines the intricate process of understanding literature on its own terms.
Native American Fiction: A User's Manual is speculative, witty, engaging, and written for the inquisitive reader. These essays--on Sherman Alexie, Forrest Carter, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch--are rallying cries for the need to read literature as literature and, ultimately, reassert the importance and primacy of the word.
Review
"[This] book is likely to become the manifesto of a new generation of Native American writers and critics and will be of interest to readers of literature anywhere." Werner Sollors
Review
"Treuer asks that novels by Native Americans be afforded their status as literature, not cultural artifacts, an argument bound to impact Native American literature programs." Booklist
Review
"Treuer's particular readings of works by Silko, Erdrich, Welch, and Alexie are brilliant, respectful, and uncompromising. The book may raise some eyebrows and probably some hackles but all concerned will be the better for it." Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English Yale University
Synopsis
An entirely new approach to reading, understanding, and enjoying Native American fiction.
This book has been written with the narrow conviction that if Native American literature is worth thinking about at all, it is worth thinking about as literature. The vast majority of thought that has been poured out onto Native American literature has puddled, for the most part, on how the texts are positioned in relation to history or culture.
Rather than create a comprehensive cultural and historical genealogy for Native American literature, David Treuer investigates a selection of the most important Native American novels and, with a novelist's eye and a critic's mind, examines the intricate process of understanding literature on its own terms.
Native American Fiction: A User's Manual is speculative, witty, engaging, and written for the inquisitive reader. These essays—on Sherman Alexie, Forrest Carter, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch—are rallying cries for the need to read literature as literature and, ultimately, reassert the importance and primacy of the word.
About the Author
DAVID TREUER is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the award-winning author of two previous novels,
Little and
The Hiawatha. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University
of Minnesota.
Table of Contents
Author's Note
Introduction: The Clouds Overhead
Smartberries
Lonely Wolf
Plain Binoculars
How to Hate/Love an Indian
The Myth of Myth
The Spirit Lives On
Indian/Not-Indian Literature
Some Final Thoughts about the Non-Existence of Native American Fiction