From Google Books: “Indian communities have their own intellectual and cultural traditions that are well equipped to analyze Native literary production. These traditions should be the eyes through which the texts are viewed. To analyze a Native text with the methods currently dominant in the academy, according to the author, is like studying the stars with a magnifying glass.“
Personal:
Yasssssss. I need to read this deeper for my own thesis, but the idea that we have enough culturally specific knowledge in our stories, oral traditions and histories ti critically look at our own written works is fact. The idea that we have our own culturally specific identities that stem from language, culture and community – no shit – and our writings would reflect this “nationalism” (so American…) – yasssss.
Quotables:
- “It goes without saying that I cannot speak for Creek people or anyone else; however, I do have the responsibility as a Creek-Cherokee critic to try to include Creek perspectives in my approach to Native literature, especially given the wealth of Creek wisdom on the subject” (1)
- “tribal literatures are the tree, the oldest literature in the Americas, the most American of American literatures. We are the canon. Native people have been on this continent at least thirty thousand years, and the stories tell us we have been here even longer than that, that we were set down by the Creator on this continent, that we originated here” (7)
- “American loves Indian culture; America is much less enthusiastic about Indian land title” (11)
- “Another aspect of Native literatures that needs to be discussed in terms of their national character is their mimetic function, the link between literature and social realities that is a natural part of the oral tradition” (16)
- “Native literature deserves to be judges by their own criteria, in their own terms, not merely in agreement with, or reaction against, European literature and theory” (243)
buy the book: Red on Red
