Invention of Native American Literature - by Robert Dale Parker (Paperback)

About the Book

In an original, widely researched, and accessibly written book, Robert Dale Parker helps redefine the study of Native American literature by focusing on issues of gender and literary form. Among the writers Parker highlights are Thomas King, John...

Book Synopsis

In an original, widely researched, and accessibly written book, Robert Dale Parker helps redefine the study of Native American literature by focusing on issues of gender and literary form. Among the writers Parker highlights are Thomas King, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ray A. Young Bear, some of whom have previously received little scholarly attention.Parker proposes a new history of Native American literature by reinterpreting its concerns with poetry, orality, and Indian notions of authority. He also addresses representations of Indian masculinity, uncovering Native literature's recurring fascination with restless young men who have nothing to do, or who suspect or feel pressured to believe that they have nothing to do. The Invention of Native American Literature reads Native writing through a wide variety of shifting historical contexts. In its commitment to historicizing Native writing and identity, Parker's work parallels developments in scholarship on other minority literatures and is sure to provoke controversy.

Review Quotes

The Invention of Native American Literature seeks to redirect the current theoretical and thematic foci of Native American literary studies away from the essentialist, authoritative directions of the canonical past into a more postmodern understanding of the field and its relationship to international literary studies. It is a compelling, original, meticulously researched, and strikingly honest text, and I would recommend it to anyone working in the field.... Parker's text is also valuable for its emphasis on the works of a diverse range of Native writers, including Great Plains authors John Joseph Matthews and D'Arcy McNickle, as well as Ray A. Young Bear, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Thomas King.

This clearly written and informative critique is strongly recommended for all academic and large public libraries and for public libraries with Native American literature collections.

About the Author

Robert Dale Parker is Professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of Faulkner and the Novelistic Imagination; The Unbeliever: The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop; and'Absalom, Absalom!': The Questioning of Fictions.