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Oral History, Lee Smith’s fifth novel, was published in 1983 and garnered national attention due to its status as a “Book-of-the-Month Club” selection (“Biography”). Oral History opens at the base of Hoot Owl Mountain, home to the remaining descendants of the almost mythical Cantrell family. A younger and somewhat estranged family member, Jennifer, comes to the Appalachian setting to gather information about her unknown past for a college assignment, appropriately termed “Oral History.” She is drawn to the small, now coal-mining community due to a legend surrounding the Cantrell family and their former home, Hoot Owl Holler. The legend morphed into a ghost story involving a haunted cabin, witchcraft, and a supposed curse on the family at hand.
There is always that one person that makes a story so interesting and impossible to get one's eyes off of. The novel, Montana 1948 by Larry Watson was a book that had good, bad and terrible things in it. A family that was well known to the town of Bentrock was involved with multiple incidents that brought negativity to the people. It was a town diversified between Indian and Caucasians. People that were influential to the novel made bad choices, caused and solved problems and also led to serious moments that others couldn’t see meaning and truth behind.
In the story “What it means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” by Sherman Alexie, two young Native American men living on the Coeur D 'Alene Indian Reservation in Plummer, Idaho, named Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire travel to Arizona to retrieve Victor’s absent father’s ashes. Victor’s father, Arnold, saved Thomas from a house fire when he was a baby, where both of Thomas’s parents died. This tragic event caused Arnold’s alcoholism to spiral into an extreme state, making him an abusive drunk. He abandons Victor and his mother when Victor is a young boy, and leaves the reservation for good.
In The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, In the second and third chapter Thomas King discusses the difference between the literary Indian and the Indian of fact. In the second chapter, King describes how the “literary Indian” was the idea of an Indian that was dying – which, in reality, didn’t exist. King describes this in his second chapter saying, “To be sure, while many of the tribes that lived along the east coast of North America, in the interior of Lower Canada, and in the Connecticut, Ohio, and St. Lawrence river valleys had been injured and disoriented by the years of almost constant warfare, by European diseases, and by the destructive push of settlers for cheap land, and the vast majority of the tribes were a comfortable distance
The Aftereffect of an Abusive Past The novel God and the Indian by Drew Hayden Taylor exhibit a strong presentation of the horrific events and the emotional effects it can have on the one being abused, as well as the abuser, through the tone of the play. During the play, the audience sees Johnny Indian as a mad woman who stalks George to force the truth of her past out of him. The usage of the tone is vivid as Johnny is written by the author to display very intense negatively felt emotions toward George. Johnny heavily blames George of inflicting abuse throughout her time in residential school.
Another, even though he was raised in a Pomo - Indian family, because of his blonde hair and blue eyes, and unidentified background he was unable to say / be truly apart of the Indian roots that molded him. Being a stereotype. Within emptiness he was able search and find more about himself than he expected. Learning about his lost Spanish Father, his
Life of a teenage Indian was hard being forced to leave. We were ran out of our land by men with guns. When we left we said goodbye to the mountains. We were put on a trail in winter many of us did not survive. This trail was taking us from are homes in Georgia to Kansas.
“The Way to Rainy Mountain” is organized very well, it includes three narrative voices. Throughout this novel the first narrative voice is about the Kiowa legends. Then Momaday has a paragraph of contexts that relates to the legend. The author gives the reader a bit of his life by relating a family experience he had. Because some of the Kiowa legends and history go with Momadays own family history, then this three voice narration allows the author to have great detail about the Kiowa’s way of life in every way.
Abstract The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian deals with the story of a teenager born and brought up in the Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit. His life gets a jolt during his schooling at the reservation school which landed him in total transformation of his life. The turning point in his life happened with the advice and counseling from his teacher Mr. P who was accidently hit by the book that the protagonist had threw out of rage.
Comparison between Revisiting Sacred Ground and All My Relations Linda Hogan and N. Scott Momaday both take their writing inspiration from their knowledge of Native American religion and the unique tribal cultures that is in their heritage. Momaday’s heritage is the Kiowa culture which is often mentioned in and plays a large role in his writings as well as how he views the world. Hogan very rarely speaks of her heritage in her writings, however she is of Chickasaw decent so it can be assumed that her writing is derived from her experiences with that particular Native American culture. Hogan’s All My Relations speaks of a ceremony that she had requested from a man that she has respected for many years. The man that she speaks of plays a huge
For my analysis I decided to read and comprehend “From A Son of the Forest” by William Apess. He was the first Native American to have a published autobiography. William was the son of a Native American women and a white man, which was becoming more and more common during this time period. Other than the information provided in his autobiography, little is known of Apess’ life. He was the leader of the first Indian Rights movement, and was an activist in civil rights.
In Thomas King 's autobiographical novel, The Truth About Stories takes a narrative approach in telling the story of the Native American, as well as Thomas King 's. The stories within the book root from the obstacles that the Thomas King had to face during his years in high school and his post-university life. These stories are told in a matter that uses rhetorical devices such as personal anecdotes & comparisons. "You 'll Never Believe What Happened" Is Always a Great Way to Start is about the importance, potential, and dangers of stories, specifically those of creation stories and how they can shape a culture, with the aim to share King 's urgency for social change with his readers King 's informal tone, lighthearted jokes, and effort to make his writing follow the style of native oral tradition as closely as possible, all help the reader understand the type of narrative he believes would be most beneficial for the foundation of a society. His unique style allows for the use of personal anecdotes and requires that he breaks the proverbial fourth wall to communicate with the reader directly, to create the conversational feel of the oral tradition.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a misfit storyteller of the Spokane tribe; Victor, an angry alcoholic guy and Junior, “the happy-go-lucky failure” appear both in the novel, Reservation Blues (1995) and in the short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1993). Alexie calls these three characters “the unholy trinity of me.” Undoubtedly, these characters bear the testimony of his social reality because Alexie wants to unmask the alcoholic addiction and cruel traits of human character.
