11 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
James Ruppert, Mediation in Contemporary Native American Fiction, American
Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series, volume 15 (Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1995).
Readings of works by N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko,
Gerald Vizenor, D’Arcy McNickle (Cree/French and Scots-Irish), and Louise
Erdrich that demonstrate how these writers draw on techniques and philoso-
phies from both European American and Native American traditions and aim
for mediation, a kind of healing, and cross-cultural understanding that maintains
respect for difference.
Leslie Marmon Silko, “Here’s an Odd Artifact for the Fairy-Tale Shelf,” SAIL:
Studies in American Indian Literatures, first series, 10 (Fall 1986): 178–184.
Highly critical review of Louise Erdrich’s second novel, The Beet Queen, accus-
ing Erdrich of ignoring native historical and social issues in favor of a focus on
individual psychology.
Dinitia Smith, “The Indian in Literature is Catching Up,” New York Times, 21
April 1997, pp. B1, B4.
Discusses a generational shift in Native American literature to an urban-oriented
group of writers.
David Treuer, Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual (St. Paul, Minn.: Gray-
wolf Press, 2006).
Breaks with established criticism to consider Native American literary works
as literature rather than as expressions of culture and sociology or interrogating
them for authenticity. Among the writers discussed are Louise Erdrich, Leslie
Marmon Silko, James Welch, and Sherman Alexie.
Jace Weaver, That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native
American Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
A survey of works from 1768 to the 1990s, considering contemporary writers
such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Vine Deloria Jr., and Gerald Vizenor, and arguing
for a commitment to community and its survival as central to Native American
writing. Weaver, a scholar of religion, also offers context for native religious tradi-
tions and considers their conflicts and compatibilities with Christianity.
PEOPLE OF INTEREST
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008)
Laguna/Sioux and Lebanese scholar and poet; the author of The Sacred Hoop:
Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), The Woman Who
Owned the Shadows (1983), Coyote’s Daylight Trip (1978), Grandmothers of the
Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook (1991), and Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected
Poems, 1962–1995 (1996).
Michael Dorris (1945–1997)
Scholar, fiction and popular nonfiction writer, and poet of Modoc, German, and
Irish descent who became director of the Native American studies program at