Seven Hands, Seven Hearts

Seven Hands, Seven Hearts
Author: Elizabeth Woody
Publisher:
Total Pages: 136
Release: 1994
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

Seven Hands, Seven Hearts includes the entirety of Elizabeth Woody's highly acclaimed first book of poems, Hand into Stone - winner of the American Book Award - as well as new poems, stories, and essays. The work is united by common themes: a rootedness in the Northwest landscape, the histories of her ancestors, and the ongoing struggle to define what it means to be a tribal member, an American, and a woman at the end of the twentieth century.

Hearts and Hands

Hearts and Hands
Author: Luis Rodriguez
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2011-01-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1609800575

Hearts and Hands deals with many of the difficult issues addressed in Luis Rodríguez’s memoir of gang life, Always Running, but with a focus on healing through community building. Empowered by his experiences as a peacemaker with gangs in Los Angeles and Chicago, Rodríguez offers a unique book of change. He makes concrete suggestions, shows how we can create nonviolent opportunities for youth today, and redirects kids into productive and satisfying lives. And he warns that we sacrifice community values for material gain when we incarcerate or marginalize people already on the edge of society. His interest in dissolving gang influence on black and latino kids is personal as well as societal; his son, to whom he dedicates Hearts and Hands, is currently serving a prison sentence for gang-related activity. With anecdotes, interviews, and time-tested guidelines, Hearts and Hands makes a powerful argument for building and supporting community life.

The Heart as a Drum

The Heart as a Drum
Author: Robin Riley Fast
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780472110773

An accessible introduction to a wide range of contemporary poetry by Native Americans

New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism

New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism
Author: Andrea Campbell
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443809225

As ecofeminism continues to gain attention from multiple academic discourses, the field of literary criticism has been especially affected by this philosophy/social movement. Scholars using ecofeminist literary criticism are making new and important arguments concerning literature across the spectrum and issues of environment, race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of oppression. The essays in New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism highlight the intersections of these oppressions through the works of different authors including Barbara Kingsolver, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Hogan and Flora Nwapa, and demonstrate the expansion of ecofeminist literary criticism to a more global scale as well as important connections with the field of environmental justice. This collection offers fresh insight and expands the important discussion surrounding the field of ecofeminism and literature.

Creative Alliances

Creative Alliances
Author: Molly McGlennen
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2014-08-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0806147660

Tribal histories suggest that Indigenous peoples from many different nations continually allied themselves for purposes of fortitude, mental and physical health, and creative affiliations. Such alliance building, Molly McGlennen tells us, continues in the poetry of Indigenous women, who use the genre to transcend national and colonial boundaries and to fashion global dialogues across a spectrum of experiences and ideas. One of the first books to focus exclusively on Indigenous women’s poetry, Creative Alliances fills a critical gap in the study of Native American literature. McGlennen, herself an Indigenous poet-critic, traces the meanings of gender and genre as they resonate beyond nationalist paradigms to forge transnational forms of both resistance and alliance among Indigenous women in the twenty-first century. McGlennen considers celebrated Native poets such as Kimberly Blaeser, Ester Belin, Diane Glancy, and Luci Tapahonso, but she also takes up lesser-known poets who circulate their work through social media, spoken-word events, and other “nonliterary” forums. Through this work McGlennen reveals how poetry becomes a tool for navigating through the dislocations of urban life, disenrollment, diaspora, migration, and queer identities. McGlennen’s Native American Studies approach is inherently interdisciplinary. Combining creative and critical language, she demonstrates the way in which women use poetry not only to preserve and transfer Indigenous knowledge but also to speak to one another across colonial and tribal divisions. In the literary spaces of anthologies and collections and across social media and spoken-word events, Indigenous women poets are mapping cooperative alliances. In doing so, they are actively determining their relationship to their nations and to other Indigenous peoples in uncompromised and uncompromising ways.

Making History

Making History
Author: Institute of American Indian Arts
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0826362095

Written by scholars actively producing Native art resources, this book guides readers--students, educators, collectors, and the public--in how to learn about Indigenous cultures as visualized in our creative endeavors.

The Diné Reader

The Diné Reader
Author: Esther G. Belin
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0816542880

2022 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award Winner The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature is unprecedented. It showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose.This wide-ranging anthology brings together writers who offer perspectives that span generations and perspectives on life and Diné history. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental inequalities. The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people. The volume opens with a foreword by poet Sherwin Bitsui, who offers insight into the importance of writing to the Navajo people. The editors then introduce the volume by detailing the literary history of the Diné people, establishing the context for the tremendous diversity of the works that follow, which includes free verse, sestinas, limericks, haiku, prose poems, creative nonfiction, mixed genres, and oral traditions reshaped into the written word. This volume combines an array of literature with illuminating interviews, biographies, and photographs of the featured Diné writers and artists. A valuable resource to educators, literature enthusiasts, and beyond, this anthology is a much-needed showcase of Diné writers and their compelling work. The volume also includes a chronology of important dates in Diné history by Jennifer Nez Denetdale, as well as resources for teachers, students, and general readers by Michael Thompson. The Diné Reader is an exciting convergence of Navajo writers and artists with scholars and educators.

Speak to Me Words

Speak to Me Words
Author: Dean Rader
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2003-11
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780816523498

Although American Indian poetry is widely read and discussed, few resources have been available that focus on it critically. This book is the first collection of essays on the genre, bringing poetry out from under the shadow of fiction in the study of Native American literature. Highlighting various aspects of poetry written by American Indians since the 1960s, it is a wide-ranging collection that balances the insights of Natives and non-Natives, men and women, old and new voices.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature

Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature
Author: Jennifer McClinton-Temple
Publisher: Infobase Learning
Total Pages: 1566
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: American literature
ISBN: 1438140576

Presents an encyclopedia of American Indian literature in an alphabetical format listing authors and their works.

Speaking for the Generations

Speaking for the Generations
Author: Simon J. Ortiz
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0816547890

Now it is my turn to stand. At Acoma Pueblo meetings, members rise and announce their intention to speak. In that moment they are recognized and heard. In Speaking for the Generations, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz brings together contemporary Native American writers to take their turn. Each offers an evocation of herself or himself, describing the personal, social, and cultural influences on her or his development as a writer. Although each writer's viewpoint is personal and unique, together they reflect the rich tapestry of today's Native literature. Of varied backgrounds, the writers represent Indian heritages and cultures from the Pacific Northwest to the northern plains, from Canada to Guatemala. They are poets, novelists, and playwrights. And although their backgrounds are different and their statements intensely personal, they share common themes of their relationship to the land, to their ancestors, and to future generations of their people. From Gloria Bird's powerful recounting of personal and family history to Esther Belin's vibrant tale of her urban Native homeland in Los Angeles, these writers reveal the importance of place and politics in their lives. Leslie Marmon Silko calls upon the ancient tradition of Native American storytelling and its role in connecting the people to the land. Roberta J. Hill and Elizabeth Woody ponder some of the absurdities of contemporary Native life, while Guatemalan Victor Montejo takes readers to the Mayan world, where a native culture had writing and books long before Europeans came. Together these pieces offer an inspiring portrait of what it means to be a Native writer in the twentieth century. With passion and urgency, these writers are speaking for themselves, for their land, and for the generations.