In North America, the Indigenous literature we know today reaches
back thousands of years to when the continent's original
inhabitants first circled fires and shared tales of emergence and
creation, journey and quest, heroism and trickery. Sean Teuton
tells the story of Indigenous literature, from the time when oral
narrative inspired the first Indigenous writers in English, through
later writers' appropriation of genres to serve the creative and
political needs of the times. In this lucid narrative he leads
readers into the Indigenous worlds from which the literatures
grows, where views about land and society and the role of humanity
in the cosmos continue to enliven western understanding. In setting
Indigenous literature in historical moments he elucidates its
various purposes, from its ancient role in bringing rain or healing
the body, to its later service in resisting European invasion and
colonization, into its current place as a world literature that
confronts dominance while it celebrates imagination and the
resilience of Indigenous lives. Along the way readers encounter the
diversity of Indigenous peoples who, owing to their differing
lands, livelihoods, and customs, evolved literatures adapted to a
nation's specific needs. While, in the nineteenth century, public
lecture and journalism fortified eastern Indigenous writers against
removal west, nearly a century later autobiography enabled western
Indigenous authors to tell their side of the winning of the west.
Throughout he treats Indigenous literature with such complexity. He
describes the single-handed invention of a written Indigenous
language, the first Indigenous language newspaper, and the literary
occupation of Alcatraz Island. Returning to contemporary poetry,
drama, and novel by authors such as D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Silko,
Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Craig Womack, Teuton demonstrates
that, like Indigenous people, Indigenous literature survives
because it adapts, honoring the past yet reaching for the future.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford
University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every
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