OtherDestiniesitself, demon strating the complexity and sophistication of Indian novels while tracing the quest for identity, attests to the earlier and ongoing vitality of a distinct Native American literature.

Owens, responding to Dorris’s criteria of “a shared consciousness, an inherently identifiable world-view”that would establish Native American litera ture as a discrete vein ofAmerican literature, argues that the theme of identity running through Indian novels provides this basis. Scott Momaday,James Welch, Gerald Vizenor, and Michael Dorris).To Owens’sown regret-and this reader’s-lesser-known nov elists such asPaulaGunn Allen,Anna LeeWalters, andJanet CampbellHale are not included in this study. For the mostpart, Owens offers a thorough treatment (Tracksisone exception) of the novels of both earlier (John Rollin Ridge, Mourning Dove, D’Arcy McNickle,JohnJoseph Mathews) and well-knowncontemporaryIndian authors (Silko, Louise Erdrich, N. Readers who follow American Indian novels will likely appreciate Owens’s approach, which draws on poststructuralist and postcolonial theory. Readers unfamiliar with Native American literature will Find in the first chapter an overview of cultural issues confronting Indian authors as well as mention of a world view from which they write and themes they choose to address. This quest may result in a limbo, as it does in Mourning Dove’s Cogewea, with the mixed-blood protagonistfeeling isolated from both Euro-American societyand the Indian world, or end in closure, as in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, with the mixed-blood becoming “a rich source ofpower”for Indian society. Instead, Indian authors pursue “other destinies”for their protagonists, thus offering a revised perspective-an Indian perspective-which insists both on the richness and the recovery of native culture and which chronicles a quest for Indian or mixed-blood identity. One role that Indian authors unanimously reject for their char acters is one that Anglo-American writers have promulgated over the last two hundred years: the VanishingAmerican.

291 pages, $24.95.) “What does it mean to be ‘Indian’-or mixedblood-in contemporary America?” This question, Louis Owens asserts, lies at the heart of American Indian novels.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ģ70 Western American Literature Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel.

Ceremony leslie marmon silko sparknotes