"Storied Voices in Native American Texts: Harry Robinson, Thomas King, James
Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko" approaches Native American literatures from within an
interdisciplinary framework that complicates traditional notions o f literary "origins" and
canon. It situates the discussion of Native literatures in a Native American context,
suggesting that contemporary Native American writing has its roots in Native oral
storytelling traditions. Each of these authors draws on specific stories and histories from
his or her Native culture. They also draw on European elements and contexts because
these are now part o f Native American experience. I suggest that Native oral tradition is
already inherently novelistic, and the stories that lie behind contemporary Native American
writing explicitly connect past and present as aspects o f current Native reality.
Contemporary Native American writers are continuing an on-going and vital storytelling
tradition through written forms.
A comparison of the texts o f a traditional Native storyteller, Robinson, with the
highly literate novels of King, Welch and Silko, shows how orally told stories connect
with the process o f writing. Robinson's storytelling suggests how these stories "theorize"
the world as he experiences it; the Native American novel continues to theorize Native
experience in contemporary times. Native writers use culturally specific stories to express
an on-going Native history. Their novels require readers to examine their assumptions
about who is telling whose story, and the traditional distinctions made between fact and
fiction, history and story. King's Green Grass. Running Water takes stories from Western
European literary traditions and Judeao-Christian mythology and presents them as part of
a Native creation story. Welch's novel Fools Crow re-writes a particular episode from
history, the Marias River Massacre, from a Blackfeet perspective. Silko's Almanac of the
Dead recreates the Mayan creation story o f the Popol Vuh in the context o f twentiethcentury
American culture. Each of these authors maintains the dialogic fluidity of oral
storytelling performance in written forms and suggests that stories not only reflect the
world, but that they create it in the way that Robinson understands storytelling as a form
of theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11396 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Chester, Blanca Schorcht |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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