|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979) is one of Oklahoma's most revered
twentieth-century authors. An Osage Indian, he was also one of the
first Indigenous authors to gain national renown. Yet fame did not
come easily to Mathews, and his personality was full of
contradictions. In this captivating biography, Michael Snyder
provides the first book-length account of this fascinating figure.
Known as ""Jo"" to all his friends, Mathews had a multifaceted
identity. A novelist, naturalist, biographer, historian, and tribal
preservationist, he was a true ""man of letters."" Snyder draws on
a wealth of sources, many of them previously untapped, to narrate
Mathews's story. Much of the writer's family life - especially his
two marriages and his relationships with his two children and two
stepchildren - is explored here for the first time. Born in the
town of Pawhuska in Indian Territory, Mathews attended the
University of Oklahoma before venturing abroad and earning a second
degree from Oxford. He served as a flight instructor during World
War I, traveled across Europe and northern Africa, and bought and
sold land in California. A proud Osage who devoted himself to
preserving Osage culture, Mathews also served as tribal councilman
and cultural historian for the Osage Nation. Like many gifted
artists, Mathews was not without flaws. And perhaps in the eyes of
some critics, he occupies a nebulous space in literary history.
Through insightful analysis of his major works, especially his
semiautobiographical novel Sundown and his meditative Talking to
the Moon, Snyder revises this impression. The story he tells, of
one remarkable individual, is also the story of the Osage Nation,
the state of Oklahoma, and Native America in the twentieth century.
Our Osage Hills presents an exciting portrait of the Wahzhazhe
(Osage) people and their prairie homelands in the early twentieth
century and beyond, this book presents excellent lost work by the
charismatic Osage author and naturalist, John Joseph Mathews, plus
a wealth of contextual stories and Osage history. Dr. Michael
Snyder discovered, compiled, and edited Mathews's captivating
articles, and crafted researched commentaries; these articles and
commentaries interweave to form an Osage-centric chronicle of the
Great Depression. Using Mathews's articles as a cue, a prompt to
move through a vast memory palace, Snyder's pieces tell a broader
story of Osage cultural survivance, continuity, and the political
struggle for sovereignty; the involvement of Osages in high culture
performance and music; the special contributions of Osage women;
the novel of the West and novelists in the West; Hollywood as a
reflection, however distorted, of the Osage Nation and the
surrounding nation; Indian athletics, especially baseball; and
crucially, birds, animals, and the beginning of ecological
understanding and the emergence of environmental protection. The
essays also offer new discoveries on the Osage murders of the
1920s, and show the continued white exploitation and violence
against Osages during the 1930s. Through this entertaining and
wide-ranging study, the reader will gain a new and fuller
understanding of the Wahzhazhe people and their homeland.
This revealing book presents a selection of lost articles from "Our
Osage Hills," a newspaper column by the renowned Osage writer,
naturalist, and historian, John Joseph Mathews. Signed only with
the initials "J.J.M.," Mathews's column featured regularly in the
Pawhuska Daily Journal-Capital during the early 1930s. While
Mathews is best known for his novel Sundown (1934), the pieces
gathered in this volume reveal him to be a compelling essayist.
Marked by wit and erudition, Mathews's column not only evokes the
unique beauty of the Osage prairie, but also takes on urgent
political issues, such as ecological conservation and Osage
sovereignty. In Our Osage Hills, Michael Snyder interweaves
Mathews's writings with original essays that illuminate their
relevant historical and cultural contexts. The result is an
Osage-centric chronicle of the Great Depression, a time of
environmental and economic crisis for the Osage Nation and country
as a whole. Drawing on new historical and biographical research,
Snyder's commentaries highlight the larger stakes of Mathews's
reflections on nature and culture and situate them within a
fascinating story about Osage, Native American, and American life
in the early twentieth century. In treating topics that range from
sports, art, film, and literature to the realities and legacies of
violence against the Osages, Snyder conveys the broad spectrum of
Osage familial, social, and cultural history.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|