Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) [Paperback]

Louis Owens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1994 | Series: American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series (Book 3)

This first book-length critical analysis of the full range of novels written between 1854 and today by American Indian authors takes as its theme the search for self-discovery and cultural recovery. In his introduction, Louis Owens places the novels in context by considering their relationships to traditional American Indian oral literature as well as their differences from mainstream Euroamerican literature. In the following chapters he looks at the novels of John Rollin Ridge, Mourning Dove, John Joseph Mathews, D’Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, and Gerald Vizenor.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish novelist and professor of literature, Owens provides an important insider's perspective on ten Native American novelists. Beginning with the Cherokee author John Rollin Ridge, whose 1854 novel, The Life and Times of Joaquin Murieta, was the first American Indian novel to be published, and moving on to contemporary authors such as Louise Erdrich and Gerald Vizenor, Owens identifies a common theme among these writers. All ten are mixed-blood Indians exploring their search for identity in two worlds, where "the individual who would 'be' Indian rather than 'play' Indian is faced with an overwhelming challenge." Owens shows how each author dealt with this marginalization through his or her characters, moving from Ridge's angry masquerade as a Mexican American bandit to Vizenor's celebration of "crossbloods" as shape-shifting tricksters mediating between two worlds. Drawing heavily on Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin's theories, Owens presents a well-written, jargon-free book on an often-ignored genre of American literature.
- Lisa A. Mitten, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Louis Owens, who is of Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish descent, is Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of several books, including Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel and the novels The Sharpest Sight and Bone Game, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (September 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806126736
• ISBN-13: 978-0806126739
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Native American

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This sets the standard for examining American Indian Lit., April 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Paperback)

Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel is solid, a real powerhouse of thoughtful readings and appropriate critical theory applied to highlight the diverse stories analyzed in this text. Owens examines the novels of Mourning Dove, Ridge, McNickle, Momaday, Dorris, Erdrich, Silko, and Vizenor while using an accessible voice and with generous notes, index, and bibliography. In his analysis he visits many of the social and political struggles each writer has encountered in their lives and represented in their writing. Other Destinies is not intended to serve the political ends of issues such as sovereignty, though it does examine the complex political climates in which these works were written. The biographical information on the political circumstances influencing Mourning Dove and John Rollin Ridge are particularly interesting for this reason. There are a few critics, both Indian and non-Indian, who wish that Owens had chosen different baseline issues, (their own political issues), to highlight in his critical examination of these novels. Owens chose, however, what he knows best and what was important to these particular texts.

For decades, centuries, the will of white America has largely expressed the desire of the politically powerful to erase American Indians from the North American landscape. Today even, if one views the efforts of such as Slade Gorton, the senator from Washington State, the effort continues. And in many ways, they have been successful. More than 50 percent of those who identify as American Indians do not live on what is today considered "Indian land," and too many have lost all contact with the land and cultures and stories of their people. But many still do retain at least vestigial and often much larger pieces of the old stories and traditions, and are working to place them back into a communal whole. For them, the mere prospect of identity must come before they would even consider the land to which their people were moved decades or centuries earlier. For everything there is a season.

In Other Destinies Owens analyzes the writings of a number of full and mixedblood Indians authors whose collective voice is growing louder with each passing year. These writers illustrate issues important to themselves; some authors are strongly rooted in place, others are only just discovering their places following the disastrous relocation Diaspora. Owens has built a sound historical and critical framework from which to examine all of these stories. These authors, like Owens, all write of their family stories and belief systems, and of the importance of place, when they know that place or adopt a new one. They are working to graft those connections into their modern lives through the power of their words.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential reference/critical text for Native Am. fiction., August 18, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Paperback)

Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel stands alone in its completelook at the history of fiction written by Native American writers. Though(fortunately) there are now so many Indian writers that this book could not include them all, Owens give a good account of many who broke new ground in their relatively recent day of producing literary fiction. Including N.Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko and others, this text, written by Dr. Owens, himself Native American of Choctaw, Cherokee and Irish descent, holds Indian texts to the same literary standards as other modern literature and finds them of equal quality. Though authoritative, this is a very readable text which received a good review in the New York Times Review of Books. Owens also writes good fiction, and could have included his own works in here, but didn't. See Wolfsong, Sharpest Sight, Bone Game and Nightland.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Overrated, December 8, 1999

By 

James Stripes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series) (Paperback)

I've been struggling with this book since it was first published. I've seen it influence dozens of other scholars who, for the most part, rave about its merits. When I read this book for the first time I was deeply immersed in study of many of the books Owens writes about. My initial experince in reading the book was quite mixed. I would find myself saying "right on" in one paragraph, followed by "nonsense" in the next.

Louis Owens writes well and communicates a perspective regarding the creative work of Native American Indian writers that is widely shared by many who study these writers professionally. His own novels are worth reading, and he seemed like a warm and friendly person when I've met him at conferences.

With all these positive attributes, why does this book deserve three stars? I disagree with Owens critical emphasis; his argument has been influential. He claims that "identity" is the central theme of Native writing. He argues that all Native writers must come to terms with their own mixedblood identity, and with consequent marginalization in two worlds. There is no question that identity is an important issue, but it is far from the central one. For many Native writers it is insignificant. For some, it is central. For others, it is an issue subordinated under other more significant issues. Identity is part of a complex of issues (land, resources, spirituality, images, and stereotypes) that are ultimately concerned with issues of self-control by individuals and communities. For tribal peoples in the United States the central issue, if there is one, is sovereignty. Because of the results of histories of denationalization (a word employed by Cherokee writers in the 1830s) many Native American Indian people are trying to find their way home (as some writers have put it). But, many others have never left home and have never suffered a crisis of self-identity. The academy, by and large, finds issues of identity a quite palatable way to accept literatures of difference because doing so does not require recognizing systemic problems in some of the fundamental assumptions of American colonization.