Diane Glancy sees books as being akin to maps,and often finds the Native American voices she writes about as she travels. Once, when driving through western Nevada, she stopped at Grant Mountain and Walker Lake, where the Ghost Dance began and still lives. There she found inspiration for The Dance Partner, this outstanding collection of short stories that begins in the present, jumps back to the time of the Ghost Dance, goes further back to the Sioux Uprising, and then moves forward again across 117 years of Plains Indian history.
The Ghost Dance was a late 19th-century phenomenon among Native American groups in the West. Followers believed that whites would disappear and that the "oldways of living" would return. In fact, Glancy’s stories form a kind of Ghost Dance, circling what is with what was and will be. History is not in the past at all, but has a presence in the present in a way that transforms the future. In a culture where much has been erased, forgotten, or lost, the fragments of what is known are woven with the possibilities of what could have been in a technique that is called ghosting. Ghosting in writing presents voices that might have been alongside voices known to have been. Glancy takes the words of Native Americans, Porcupine and Kicking Bear, along with those of ethnologist James Mooney, and adds imagined voices. The past roams into the present. History comes down the road in many vehicles, out of chronological order, carnival trucks with different rides, each setting up unreality in funhouse mirrors that distort them into new ways of seeing is true. Glancy writes from a historical perspective and the imagination of what could have been. In the end, the Ghost Dance symbolizes the possibility of a rewritten life.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for students on millions of items. Learn more |
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Diane Glancy is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she teaches Native American Literature and Creative Writing. Among her many writing awards are the 1993 American Book Award, Minnesota Book Award, and a Native American Prose Award. Glancy is of Cherokee and English/German descent.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Native American culture shines through short tales of past/present,
By D. Donovan, Editor/Sr. Reviewer "California B... (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dance Partner (Paperback)
Collections strong in Native American literature and writings will find Diane Glancy's search of Native American culture shines through in her short stories, which begin in the present and move back in Native American history. Tales survey over a hundred years of Native history and provide poignant reflections on spirituality, massacres and more.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
