Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

By: Bob Blaisdell

Published by Courier Corporation, 2014-06-18

This new anthology of short fiction by Native Americans features a wide range of contemporary writers. It includes stories dating from the early twentieth century by Pauline Johnson, daughter of a Mohawk chief, whose works helped define Canadian literature; Zitkala-Sa, a Sioux writer whose books were among the first to bring Native American stories to wider recognition; John M. Oskison, whose Cherokee ancestry informed his tales of the cultural clash faced by children of mixed marriages; and D'Arcy McNickle, Cree activist and anthropologist.<br> Ten additional stories date from the 1960s through the twenty-first century, ranging in their settings from Canada to New Mexico. Selections include Leslie Marmon Silko's &quot;The Man to Send Rain Clouds,&quot; &quot;Crow's Sun&quot; by Duane Niatum, &quot;Beading Lesson&quot; by Beth H. Piatote, Sherman Alexie's &quot;War Dances,&quot; and other tales that explore cultural borders and intersections, dramatizing the ways in which people discover their own heritage as well as the wider world.