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Gerald Vizenor counters the cultural notions of dominance, false representations, and simulations of absence, and, by documents, experience, and theories, secures a narrative presence of Native Americans.
"Weaving together strands of myth, memory, legend, and history, Bear Island lyrically conveys a historical event that has been forgotten not only by the majority culture but also by some Anishinaabe people - bringing back to light a key moment in Minnesota's history with clarity of vision and emotional resonance."--BOOK JACKET.
With wry humor and imaginative acuity, noted writer Gerald Vizenor offers compelling glimpses of modern Native American life and the different ways that Native Americans and whites interact, fight, and resolve their conflicts. The elusive borderland between white and Native American cultures is further complicated by exchanges of money, services, language, and skills that make up what Vizenor calls the ?new fur trade.? When Native Americans resist dominance, they fight back incisively and creatively with humor in the strategic word wars of survivance over victimry. ΓΈ Vizenor illuminates the troubling encounters and distant reaches of this modernist fur trade through his creative narratives. Especially memorable is the reincarnation of General George Custer as the head of Native American programs and the mystifying play of words between charity agencies and Native Americans. Several of Vizenor?s stories focus on a so-called urban reservation, Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. In the last section Vizenor recalls his experiences and observations while reporting on the murder trial of a young Native American student, Thomas White Hawk, in South Dakota.
Bearheart, Gerald Vizenors first novel, overturns OC terminal creedsOCO and violence in a decadent material culture. American civilization has collapsed and Proude Cedarfair, his wife, Rosina, and a bizarre collection of disciples, are forced on a pilgrimage when government agents descend on the reservation to claim their sacred cedar trees for fuel. The tribal pilgrims reverse the sentiments of Manifest Destiny and travel south through the ruins of a white world that ran out of gas."
Winner of the 1988 American Book Award for his novel Griever: An American Monkey King in China, Gerald Vizenor is a radical, even revolutionary, voice among of contemporary Native American writers. Deborah L. Madsen offers a comprehensive overview of Vizenor's work in all literary genres, including poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction, as she explores the themes, images, and stylistic devices that define Vizenor's challenging and significant body of work. In his critique of corporate greed and environmental devastation, of political incompetence and self-interest, and of the modern culture of simulation, celebrity and hype, Vizenor consistently proves himself to be unafraid to prod and pro...
HISTORY AND CRITIQUE OF NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE.
Native sovereignty, Gerald Vizenor contends, is not possessed but expressed. It emerges not from practicing vengeful and exclusionary policies and politics, or by simple recourse to territoriality, but by turning to Native transmotion, the forces and processes of creativity and imagination lying at the heart of Native world-views and actions. Overturning long-held scholarly and popular assumptions, Vizenor offers a vigorous examination of tragic cultures and victimry.
The classic autobiography of the famous Indigenous writer and critic Gerald Vizenor The classic memoir by one of the most celebrated Indigenous writers of the modern era, Interior Landscapes offers an unforgettable glimpse of the life and world of Gerald Vizenor. Vizenor writes about his experiences as a tribal mixedblood in the new world of simulations; the themes in his autobiographical stories are lost memories and a "remembrance past the barriers." The chapters open with natural harmonies and the premier union of the Anishinaabe families of the crane and the first white fur traders. The author bares his fosterage, his ambitions, his contentions with institutions and imposed histories; hi...
Gerald Vizenor gives life to traditional tribal stories by presenting them in a new perspective: he challenges the idyllic perception of rural life, offering in its stead an unusual vision of survival in the cities-the sanctuaries for humans and animals. It is a tribal vision, a quest for liberation from forces that would deny the full realization of human possibilities. In this modern world his characters insist upon survival through an imaginative affirmation of the self. In Dead Voices Vizenor, using tales drawn from traditional tribal stories, illuminates the centuries of conflict between American Indians and Europeans, or "wordies." Bagese, a tribal woman transformed into a bear, has di...
Postindian Conversations is the first collection of in-depth interviews with Gerald Vizenor, one of the most powerful and provocative voices in the Native world today. These lively conversations with the preeminent novelist and cultural critic reveal much about the man, his literary creations, and his critical perspectives on important issues affecting Native peoples at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The book also casts new light on his sometimes controversial ideas about contemporary Native identity, politics, economics, scholarship, and literature. Gerald Vizenor is a professor of American Studies and Native American literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the American Book Award-winner Griever: An American Monkey King in China. A. Robert Lee is a professor of American literature at Nihon University in Tokyo. His books include Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America. His edited works include Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader.