You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A dead bridge. A dead theory. The Bering Strait theory, dead to Native peoples, whose hundreds of creation accounts dispel those of anthropologists. This new collection by Mohawk poet, James Thomas Stevens, was written after a trip to China in 2002. After visiting the Catholic Xujiahui cathedral across from his hotel, he began research on Jesuit interactions with Asia. What he encountered there in the cathedral and in museums in Shanghai, was reminiscent of the history of Jesuits in his home in Iroquoia, especially in the Mohawk homelands along the Saint Lawrence River. The first poem in the collection, (dis)Orient, addresses issues of charting and mapping, as well as issues of authority. It...
James Thomas Stevens braids language and silence, memory and longing, loss and renewal, into an utterly original and eloquent music. --Arthur Sze.
None
True story of how the North West Mounted Police prosecuted Jack Fiddler and other members of his clan for murder as a result of shamanistic activities in 1907. Also a history of 300 years of clan life in the northern bush of Manitoba and how they were affected by the white traders, commissioners, missionaries, and police.
Poetry. Native American Studies. Selected by Juliana Spahr for Subpress, MOHAWK/SAMOA: TRANSMIGRATIONS draws on the songs and stories of two geographically distant cultures to create a unique poetic collaboration. By writing beautifully spare new poems that stem out of each other's translations from Mohawk and Samoan, James Thomas Stevens and Caroline Sinavaiana have " created] an exciting mesh where Mohawk and Samoan inform each other to erase boundaries between individual and collective, past and present, inner and outer worlds." Arthur Sze"
Horsefly Dress is a meditation on the experience and beauty of suffering, questioning its triggers and ultimate purpose through the lens of historical and contemporary interactions and complications of Séliš, Qĺispé, and Christian beliefs. Heather Cahoon’s collection explores dark truths about the world through first-person experiences, as well as the experiences of her family and larger tribal community. As a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Cahoon crafts poems that recount traditional stories and confront Coyote’s transformation of the world, including his decision to leave certain evils present, such as cruelty, greed, hunger, and death. By weaving together s...
The first Native American postmodern poetry anthology. A revival of the magic of sound.
Poetry. James Thomas Stevens's exquisite collection of poetry THE GOLDEN BOOK generates its capacious lyric from its 'form(s) of encounter' and how these encounters build intimate lyric addresses with fertile syntax and deep innovation; resourcing a grammar until its signification astounds. Stevens's poems have a keen, sensorial candor, full of a private and conscientious recall: 'Single memories or sensory stimuli are sometimes set off, as entire histories.' And then there's its sentence level where the poems truly are 'In like lions, out like lambs.'--Prageeta Sharma
Two-Spirit people, identified by many different tribally specific names and standings within their communities, have been living, loving, and creating art since time immemorial. It wasn’t until the 1970s, however, that contemporary queer Native literature gained any public notice. Even now, only a handful of books address it specifically, most notably the 1988 collection Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Since that book’s publication twenty-three years ago, there has not been another collection published that focuses explicitly on the writing and art of Indigenous Two-Spirit and Queer people. This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of identities withi...
Words of a Feather is a poetry and bird chapbook designed to uplift pandemic-era Kansans in the environmental humanities. In these complicated times, the chapbook keeps it simple: connecting Douglas County residents with the beauty of local birds and engaging them with deep humanities questions guided by poetry. As we continue to socially distance, we can consider and enjoy a renewed focus on communion with the outdoors and the common good of environmental stewardship.