Earth Song, Sky Spirit [Paperback]

Clifford E. Trafzer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0385469608 | ISBN-13: 978-0385469609 | Publication Date: February 4, 1997 | Edition: 1st

A vibrant, vital anthology of stories that  portray the lives of Native Americans today, featuring  the work of N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich,  Leslie Marmon Silko, and more than two dozen other  gifted, authentic voices.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this volume, Trafzar, director of Native American studies at the University of California, Riverside, continues the communally practiced Native American art of storytelling; although the book is of uneven quality, Trafzer is to be commended for introducing two dozen Native American writers who, along with a handful of their well-known colleagues, convey a number of Native American traditions as well as contemporary concerns. LeAnne Howe describes Choctaw burial practices, focusing on the duties of a ritual bone picker of the 18th century who scrapes the flesh off the bones of his dead wife; Gerald Vizenor depicts the Native American Silent People who come from various tribes and communicate using their hands; and Gordon D. Henry Jr., tells of a White Earth Chippewa whose ability to speak was destroyed at a boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs but who finds his voice through subversive political acts. Sherman Alexie's Spokane protagonist jokes about his cancer; Andrew Connors's dreamy Bad River Ojibwe hero unwittingly becomes the spokesperson for his people and the media's pet; Harvest Moon Eyes's unscrupulous tribal leaders try to sell out their fellow Cherokee; and Penny Olson's Ojibway girl is sexually molested by her neighbor.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Trafzer (Native American Studies/Univ. of California/Riverside) compiles an unusually interesting mix: 30 stories (and novel excerpts)--most never before published and many by unknowns--that range from amateurish to extremely literary, historical to futuristic. As for big names: M. Scott Momaday is represented by a previously uncollected story; Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch by novel excerpts (Welch's, unfortunately, so poorly chosen as to seem a book condensation parody); while Gerald Vizenor, Joseph Bruchac, and Paula Gunn Allen look to tradition and myth. At the same time, new work includes a top-notch story from Sherman Alexie (in a world where ``making fry bread and helping people die are the last two things Indians are good at,'' a cancer patient drives his wife away by making jokes about his terminal condition); Duane Niatum is poetic and intense about an adulterous Indian-Jewish affair; Diane Glancy is at her difficult poetic best; LeAnne Howe goes vividly back to an 18th- century Choctaw burial ceremony; Gordon Henry writes of a man robbed of his mother tongue for whom arson becomes protest and performance art and who eventually finds a language in haiku. Some less successful stories are interesting in putting Indian protagonists in situations familiar to non-Indian counterparts (a young woman doesn't want to resemble her mother; a 50-year-old yearns for adventure, then recognizes the value of her marriage; a woman remembers child sexual abuse). Stylistic and structural traits emerge: ironic linguistic playfulness with the ``enemy's'' (English) language; storytelling that resists exclusive focus on the individual, preferring multiple shifts and viewpoints to emphasize the community. An uneven collection, but valuable nonetheless for its range of Native American sensibilities--some deeply rooted in tradition, some very much in the American mainstream. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (February 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385469608
• ISBN-13: 978-0385469609
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)