Southwestern Literature and Culture in the English Classroom. INSTITUTION Arizona State Univ., Tempe
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DOCUMENT RESUAE ED 052 180 TE 002 439 AUTHOR Donelson, Kenneth, Ed. TITLE Southwestern Literature and Culture in the English Classroom. INSTITUTION Arizona State Univ., Tempe. PUB DATE Apr 71 NOTE 122p. AVAILABLE FRCM Ken Donelson, Ed., Arizona English Bulletin, English Dept., Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85281 ($1.50); National Council ot Teachers ot English, Order Dept., 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, Ill. 61801 (Stock No. 38257, $1.50) JOURNAL CIT Arizona English Bulletin; v13 n3 p1-118 Apr 1971 EDRS PRICE EDRS Price ME-$0.65 HC-$6.58 DESCRIPTORS *American Indians, *Bibliographies, *Ethnic Groups, *Folk Culture, *Literature, Literature Reviews ABSTRACT Papers concerning the Southwest Indians as to folklore, customs, literature, ethnic groups, cultural similarities, reading lists, and pilgrimages make up this issue of the Arizona English Bulletin. (DB) ''IMENT Of HEALTH. EDUCATION 8 WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. ANA 1971 A SOUTHWESTERN LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM R O Number 3 1 Volume 13 - - - 0 April 1971 NGL. SH Were* A III1111111111 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY kerworrr+ TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U.S. OFFICE OF EDUCATION. ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN A Member of the NCTE Exchange Agreement The ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN is a publication of the Arizona English Teachers Association, a non-profit state affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English. The BULLETIN exists to create effective statewide articulation of English teachers at all levels, to increase awareness of new ideas, programs, and movements in Engli5h, and to improve instruction at every level. The BULLETIN is published three times a year, in October, February, and April. It is supported by the English section of the Arizona College Association, and supported and subsidized by the Arizona English Teachers Association, Northern Arizona University, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University. Membership in the Arizona English Teachers Association (including subscription to the BULLETIN) is $4.60 a year (a three year membership is available for $10.00). Send applications for membership to Mrs. Coleen Goodwin, Treasurer, AETA Central High School 4525 N. Central Avenue Phoenix, Arizona85012 Make checks payable to the AETA and include both school and home addresses and zip codes. Subscriptions to the BULLETIN are $3.00 for the three issues. Individual issues may be purchased for $1.25. For subscriptions or individual copies, send a check payable to ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN to Ken Donelson, Editor, ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN LL 639, English Department Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85281 Note to contributors: The editor of the ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN welcomes all contributions related to the teaching of English and applicable to the theme of a forthcoming issue. Writers may find the following helpful in preparing manu- scripts. 1. Ordinarily, papers should be no longer than 10-15 typed, double spaced pages. 2. Writers who wish to submit brief notes should consider submittlng them as paragraphs for the Shoptalk section. 3. Avoid footnotes, unless absolutely necessary. If vital, list consecu- tively at the end of the article. 4. The BULLETIN serves all teachers of English, but its primary allegiance is to the National Council of Teachers of English, not the Modern Language Association. 5. The editor assumes the right to make small changes to fit the format or the needs of the BULLETIN. Major surgery will be handled by corres- pondence. Subjects for the 1969-1970 Issues: October (English for the Bilingual); February (Media anTihireacning of English); and April (Research and Experiments in the English Class). 2 ARIZONA ENGLISH BULLETIN r-4 (NJ Spring 1971 --- - SOUTHWESTERN LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM LCN O Contents L.1.1 An Introduction to the Hopi Indians and Their Mythology LaVerne Harrell Clark, Tucson 1 Which Southwestern Literature and Culture in the English Classroom? Philip D. Ortego, University of Texas at El Paso 15 Folklore and Cultural Awareness in the Schools Byrd Howell Granger, University of Arizona 18 Color Me Grey, Dobie, or Sandoz Warren M. Packer, Kofa High School, Yuma 23 Thinking of My People Fannie Tallman, Student at Valley High School, Sanders 31 Witchcraft in the Classroom Ruth Thomas, Kaibab School, Scottsdale 32 Southwestern Customs and ?.ore as Examples of Universals Virginia Sisco, Wakefield Junior High School, Tucson 37 Rainy Mountain, Legends and Students Marie Smith, St. Mary's High School, Phoenix 41 Teaching Cultural Similarities Through Animal Stories Judy Daniels, Ganado Public School, Ganado 45 Some New Classroom Vistas in Southwestern Literature Gerald Haslam, Sonoma State College, Cotati, California 48 The Relevancy of Folklore in the English Class Doris Seibold, Nogales Figh School 55 A Very Personal View of Wesf.ern Literature Betty Whetton, Kenilworth School, Phoenix 59 Cowboys and Indians in the Classroom, or A Shotgun Approach to Teaching American Literature Mildred Jeranko and Jane Tyo, Cortez High School, Glendale 62 Research, Report, and Record: A Folklore Unit Edna Webb, Fifteenth Street Junior High School, Douglas 65 The Respectability of Southwestern Literature Keith Cunningham, Northern Arizona University 69 A Fistful of Southwestern Books for Students and Teachers Kenneth L. Donelson, Arizona State University 71 Pilgrimages Have Not Changed Virginia Sisco, Wakefield Junior High School, Tucson 77 Current Reading 80 Shoptalk 109 3 Preface to SOUTHWESTERN LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM During the last few years, we hamwitnessed a phenomenal growth of interest in Western or Southwestern mythology and ballads and history and novels and social criticism and legends and nature writing and folklore. Readers and scholars may dispute particular reasons for this interest in things Western and Southwestern, but the growing lists of regional books from the presses of the University of Arizona and the University of New Mexico and the University of Oklahoma and the University of Nebraska, the growth of popularity of journals as dissimilar as TRUE WEST and AMERICAN WEST and WESTERN AMERICAN LITERATURE, and the proposed scholarly bibliography of Southwestern Literature all attest to a genuine and widespread interest. Perhaps the enthusiasm stems from a nostalgic waxing for yesteryear or the good-old-days or the far-more-simple-and-secure-past when right was right and wrong was wrong and both were easily and clearly discernible. Perhaps the contin- uiag fascination with the simplicity and directness and excitement and heroism of many cowboy movies and cow-country stories is partially responsible. Perhaps the near national interest (sometimes bordering on mania) for ecology and saving what is left of the country's wilderness may be a reason, for the national attitude toward the idea of wilderness has changed drastically in the last 200 years. Per- haps the cultural clashes so inevitable in the West represent in a microcosm what mankind faces throughout the world, and in that microcosm man may view the problems and dilemmas of adjusting to an inevitably altered world to come. Perhaps our national guilt about past mistreatment of the downtrodden is responsible, for almost no group has been trodden down much more (and ignored or misinterpreted in the process) than the Indians. This issue contains articles on all sorts of things related to the Southwest- - Indians, folklore, customs, literature, ethnic groups, cultural similarities, read- ing lists, pilgrimages. It has enough information and titles and teaching sugges- tions to last most teachers several years. The bibliography alone might provide sufficient reading for several nights' labor. It is a particularly rich issue. Some readers may question what is included or excluded by that ambiguous geo- graphical term, "Southwestern," in the title. Writers and historians have never delineated clearly what the term means, though nearly everyone using it has some un- derstanding of what it means to him. In his "Southwestern Regional Material in a Literature Class," John Hakac suggests the difficulty of defining the term by noting that Eugene Hollon included only Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona in his THE SOUTHWEST: OLD AND NEW, that C. L. Sonnichsen included the same four states in his anthology THE SOUTHWEST IN LIFE AND LITERATURE, and that J. Frank Dobie defined the area as "The principal areas of the Southwest are, to have done with air-minded reservations, Arizona, New Mexico, most of Texas, some of Oklahoma, and anything el;e north, south, east, or west that anybody wants to bring in" in his essential GUIDE TO THE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE SOUTHWEST. Hakac's article in WESTERN REVIEW (Spring 1970, pp. 12-18) is worth reading for anyone interested in the West or Southwest but his comments on the difficulty of describing specifi- cally what the Southwest is or is not pretty well explains the fuzziness of the editor in selecting material for this issue. The editor shares Dobie's view that the Southwest includes just about anything anyone wants to get in. If Arizona, New Mexi- co, Oklahoma, and Texas belong, the editor democratically includes at least chunks of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, California, and Kansas. Characters