Exiles in Our Own Land: Native American Novelists
Rachel Tudor
Publication: Volume 1 Issue 3
Abstract
This paper examines the status of Native American novelists and their texts in America in reference to critical assessment, explication, style, critical theory, audience reception, and awareness. The essay includes explication of texts of leading Native American authors and critics: N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Thomas King, Louis Owens, Greg Sarris, Leslie Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and James Welch. The essay also discusses examples of explication by non-Native critics as well as examination of various critical theories in reference to Native American literature. Specific topics discussed include: the idea of home, multiple identities of the exiles, the politics of exile, exile as a locus of self-transformation, facile critical theories diluting the sufferings of exile, and Native Americans as “alien residents” and artists in exile.
Keywords: Native American, Indigenous, Postmodern, Realism, Mimetic, Magical realism, Heteroglossia, Polyphony, Simulacrum, Exile.
Rachel Tudor (rachel.tudor@yahoo.com) earned a PhD in English at the University of Oklahoma. Her areas of specialization are Native American and American literature and Modernity and Theory. She taught Native American literature at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and the University of Idaho. She was awarded the Bishop-Baldwin, Barton and Phillips Civil Rights Advocacy Award by Oklahomans for Equality in 2016.