Studies in American Indian Literatures Editor Malea Powell Michigan State University
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volume 19 . number 2 . summer 2007 Studies in American Indian Literatures editor malea powell Michigan State University Published by the University of Nebraska Press 1 subscriptions 2 Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL ISSN 0730-3238) is the only 3 scholarly journal in the United States that focuses exclusively on American 4 Indian literatures. SAIL is published quarterly by the University of Nebraska 5 Press for the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 6 (ASAIL). Subscription rates are $37 for individuals and $90 for institutions. 7t Single issues are available for $21. For subscriptions outside the United 8 States, please add $20. Canadian subscribers please add 6% GST. To sub- 9t scribe, please contact the University of Nebraska Press. Payment must ac- 10 company order. Make checks payable to the University of Nebraska Press and mail to: 11 12t Customer Service 13 1111 Lincoln Mall 14 Lincoln, NE 68588-0630 15 Telephone 800-755-1105 (United States and Canada) 16 402-472-3581 (other countries) 17 www.nebraskapress.unl.edu 18 19 All inquiries on subscription, change of address, advertising, and other busi- 20 ness communications should be addressed to the University of Nebraska 21 Press. For information on membership in ASAIL or the membership subscrip- 22 tion discount please contact: 23 24 Ellen L. Arnold 25 1247 Stoneybrook Lane 26 Boone, NC 28607 27 828-264-0968 28 [email protected] or 29 [email protected] 30 31 submissions 32 The editorial board of SAIL invites the submission of scholarly, critical, 33 pedagogical, and theoretical manuscripts focused on all aspects of American 34 Indian literatures as well as the submission of poetry and short fiction, biblio- 35 graphical essays, review essays, and interviews. We define “literatures” broadly 36 to include all written, spoken, and visual texts created by Native peoples. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the most recent edi- tion of the MLA Style Manual. Please send three clean copies of the manu- script along with a self-addressed envelope and sufficient postage to permit the return of the reviewed submission, or you may submit by e-mail as an attachment (preferably in Rich Text Format [RTF]). SAIL observes a “blind reading” policy, so please do not include an author name on the title, first page, or anywhere else in the article. Do include your contact information, such as address, phone number, and e-mail address on a separate sheet with your submission. All submissions are read by outside reviewers. Submissions should be sent directly to: Daniel Heath Justice Department of English, University of Toronto 170 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5B 2M8 Canada Rights to the articles are held by the individual contributors. All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America SAIL is available online through Project MUSE at http://muse.jhu.edu. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Anthro- pological Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Bibliography of Native North Americans, Current Abstracts, Current Contents/Arts & Humanities, ERIC Databases, IBR: International Bibliography of Book Reviews, IBZ: International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, MLA International Bibliography, and TOC Premier. Cover: Photo courtesy of Bonita Bent-Nelson © 2003, design by Kimberly Hermsen Interior: Kimberly Hermsen 1 general editor 2 Malea Powell 3 4 book review editor 5 P. Jane Hafen 6 creative works editors 7t Joseph W. Bruchac and Janet McAdams 8 9t editorial board 10 Chadwick Allen, James Cox, Dean Rader, and Lisa Tatonetti 11 12t editorial assistants 13 Deborah R. Grace and Kimberli Lee 14 15 editors emeritus 16 Helen Jaskoski 17 Karl Kroeber Robert M. Nelson 18 John Purdy 19 Rodney Simard 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 contents 1 Living History: A Conversation with Kimberly Blaeser jennifer andrews 22 More Than One Way to Tell a Story: Rethinking the Place of Genre in Native American Autobiography and the Personal Essay tyra twomey 52 Approaching a Sacred Song: Toward a Respectful Presentation of the Discourse We Study andie diane palmer 62 Revising Strategies: The Intersection of Literature and Activism in Contemporary Native Women’s Writing lisa j. udel 83 Will Rogers’s Indian Humor roumiana velikova 105 Contributor Biographies 106 Major Tribal Nations and Bands 1 2 3 4 5 6 7t 8 9t 10 11 12t 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Living History A Conversation with Kimberly Blaeser jennifer andrews An enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Kimberly Blaeser was raised on the White Earth Reservation in northwest- ern Minnesota. Blaeser is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she teaches Native American literature. She is has written three collec- tions of poetry, Trailing You, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Apprenticed to Justice, and an academic study of fellow White Earth writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor, titled Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition, and edited an anthology of short fiction by Anishinaabe writers called Stories Migrating Home. Blaeser has pub- lished more than sixty articles, personal essays, poems, and short stories in American and Canadian journals, newspapers, and collec- tions and is the recipient of numerous awards. This transcribed and subsequently collaboratively edited inter- view is part of a larger book-length project on recent Native North American women poets’ use of humor and irony. The following conversation took place in March 2003 at Blaeser’s home in rural Wisconsin and since has been updated several times via e-mail. jennifer andrews: I want to start by asking how your poetry informs your scholarship, and vice versa. I’m thinking particularly of the haiku poems you’ve authored and your analysis of the haiku form in your book on Gerald Vizenor. kimberly blaeser: In some ways I think there’s a tension that plays out between the creative and the academic, and it might be because there’s an inbred expectation of what it means to be an aca- 2 sail · summer 2007 · vol. 19, no. 2 1 demic. And so, of course, I resist that, and it’s apparent in some of 2 my critical pieces. I tend to try to break open those expectations and 3 deliberately not fulfill them by doing instead whatever it is I want to 4 do in my discussion of the texts. I was telling you about that book 5 that Craig Womack and a couple of other people are editing; the 6 essay I did for them is not at all what you would think of as a clas- 7t sic academic essay. I’m playing a lot with that form and allowing the 8 parts of my work, and ways of thinking and dealing with language, 9t to mingle and come closer together. With haiku, it’s a slightly dif- 10 ferent situation, because the way that Vizenor himself engages with 11 the idea of haiku or haiku theory is creative. His language about it 12t is creative, and it’s energizing, not static in the way that we think of 13 academic accounts or descriptions. So I think that the very essence 14 of haiku makes the possibility of writing about it easier because it 15 brings the creative and the critical closer together. 16 ja: What you’ve said about playing with form is really interest- 17 ing, because your book on Vizenor is classically academic in struc- 18 ture and tone but written in a very accessible way. So it seemed you 19 were already playing with the form of scholarly texts by making your 20 monograph accessible and, in particular, making Vizenor’s language 21 accessible, which is often tricky. Speaking of influence, in your first 22 book of poems, Trailing You, you begin the collection with a pref- 23 ace that celebrates the influence of family and friends. Collectivity 24 seems to be central in the preface: the idea that there isn’t a stereo- 25 typical solitary writer. And then there’s a whole section of poems in 26 the second book, “From One Half-Mad Writer to Another,” which 27 dialogues with and pays tribute to a variety of writers and different 28 languages. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how other 29 writers have influenced your work. 30 kb: That’s a great question. The idea of feeling that none of this 31 is something that is only my voice is just the way I understand story, 32 or even understand identity. I so much feel that anything I say, think, 33 am, be, write—all of that—is inevitably intertwined beyond our 34 ability to track it back. I think that from the uterus, and beyond, 35 we’re linked to other people, to other stories, voices, and experiences. 36 In my family there was so much oral exchange because early on we Andrews: Living History 3 lived in the middle of nowhere with my grandparents; we didn’t have television or any of those kinds of things, and part of the whole pro- cess of everyday life was this lively oral exchange. People would tell stories; they would mimic one another; they would tease; they would joke; they would sing. I was really quite shy and quiet as a child in the midst of all this hullabaloo, but it embedded itself, and I imag- ine marked me in a certain way, and I feel that is part of who I am. So when I come to any kind of writing, I know that those voices are there, whether or not I can identify them.