Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1900-1970

Front Cover
Paula Gunn Allen
Ballantine Books, 1994 - Fiction - 321 pages
"The long centuries of oppression suffered by Native Americans have not been endured entirely in vain, for from them Indian writers created a unique and compelling Native literary tradition. Edited by Paula Gunn Allen, Voice of the Turtle provides an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Native American narrative literature from its first publication in 1900 through 1970. Long overdue, it is the first book that codifies a canon of Native American experience and literature. The overarching themes of this anthology are transformation and change, which together have always defined not only Native American culture but also its literature. "The process recorded in these pages is not 'evolutionary'," writes Paula Gunn Allen. "it is, rather, an account of how what changes and what endures interact." In forms as varied as oral recitation, autobiography, and fiction, these Native authors explore the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic effects of change on a timeless culture struggling to maintain its most life-sustaining, sacred beliefs. Voice of the Turtle gives readers a profound sense of the multiplicity of Native traditions and their ritual-centered world view. It also provides a new awareness of the richness, depth, and range of Native American literature during a century when Native culture was fighting triumphantly, in the long run - for breath and life." --

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
A Red Girls Reasoning
20
The War Maiden
41
Copyright

18 other sections not shown

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About the author (1994)

Of Laguna Pueblo and Sioux descent, Allen was one of the best-known Native American writers and critics and cousin to another, Leslie Marmon Silko. She was born in Grants, New Mexico, on October 24, 1939. She received a bachelor's degree in English in 1966 and a master's degree of fine arts in creative writing in 1968 from the University of Oregon and a doctorate in American studies in 1975 from the University of New Mexico. She taught at numerous schools during her lifetime including San Francisco State, University of California at Berkeley and University of California at Los Angeles. She wrote 17 books including volumes of her own poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She also edited important collections of Native American writing. She received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was a postdoctoral fellow in American Indian Studies. She received numerous awards including an American Book Award for editing Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Short Stories by American Indian Writers in 1990 and the Hubbell Medal in 1999. She devoted much of her work to combating oppression by critiquing the ideas that have sanctioned it. The Woman Who Owned the Shadows (1983), is about a woman who comes to realize that she is a lesbian. Allen explores and affirms for women and lesbians the ideas of Spider Grandmother who, in many Native American traditions, is the creator of the heavens, the earth, and all the spirit beings, and therefore an icon of female power. The Sacred Hoop (1986), is a collection of essays written over a number of years that explicitly argue that Native American literature, traditions, mythology, and spirituality can be powerful antidotes to white racism, sexism, and homophobia. She died of lung cancer on May 29, 2008.