overview: “In the informative introduction King explores the reasons for his title choice and outlines how some of his selections fit into the theme. He provides insight into the relationship between treaditional native culture and contemporary literature, from which he has chosen a “representative sample.”” – CM Archive
personal: I really enjoyed King’s introductory essay. He taps into many often big ideas that are still being hashed in today’s Indigenous literature – such as the ‘markers’ of Indian-ism, and who is an Indian and what is indigenous literature, and what about literature that is not defined by the ‘oral’ styles or ‘connections’ with nature and land? These are still being hashed out, almost 26 years after the first printing of this collection. But by saying that these stories – pushing boundaries by theme or content or story itself – are ‘relations’ – they’re kin, they’re family. These stories, and the storytellers, have a responsibility to the story an dot each other, and it’s up to us as readers to now read through and find the connections, understanding that this isn’t even a small ‘sample’ of Indigenous literature.
quotes:
- ““All my relations” is at first a reminder of who we are and of our relationship with both our family and our relatives” (ix)
- “More than that, “all my relations” is an encouragement for us to accept the responsibilities we have within this universal family by living our lives in a harmonious and moral manner” (ix)
- “We could simply say Native literature is literature produced by Natives” (x)
- “Perhaps our simple definition that Native literature is literature produced by Natives will suffice for the while providing we resist the temptation of trying to define a Native” (xi)
- “Though virtually invisible outside a tribal setting, oral literature remains a strong tradition and is one of the major influences on many Native writers” (xii)
- “While these stories are different, each possess a timeless quality that speaks to some of the essential relationship that exist in traditional cultures – the relationship between humans and the animals, the relationship between humans and the land, and the relationship between reality and imagination” (xiii)
- “For Native writers, community – a continuous community – is one of the primary ideas from which our literature proceeds” (xv)
- “…we must also deal with the concept of “Indian-ness,” a nebulous term that implies a set of expectations that are used to mark out that which is Indian and that which is not” (xv)
buy the book: All My Relations
