Stories through Theories/Theories through Stories: North American Indian Writing, Storytelling and Critique (review)

This collection explores the relationship between American Indian literature and contemporary critical theory. As acknowledged by Henry in his introductory essay "Allegories of Engagement: Stories/ Theories—A Few Remarks," this relationship has at times been contentious. Some American Indian writers and scholars have expressed resistance to Western theory and its possible applications to American Indian literature. Yet other American Indian writers and scholars, including Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, have utilized Western methodologies, terminologies, and theories. Henry goes on to note that the editors' interest in the relationship between American Indian literature and contemporary critical theory was "fueled" by the works of Gerald Vizenor. In fact, several of the essays in the collection utilize Vizenor's large body of work. Henry does an excellent job delineating the context from which the collection emerged and the variety of ways in which the essays engage with the intertwined relationship between stories and theories. He notes:

We could never write enough to say what stories are, how they function, or what methodologies might be best for considering them as primary critical tools, in a sort of meta-stories critical process. In fact stories may lead to, may have already led us to, theories and then back again to stories

(18).

This wonderfully diverse collection includes essays by Native and non-Native scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe. This book is divided into three sections: "Living to Tell," "Critical Traces," and "Of Good Listeners."

The first section, "Living to Tell," contains five individual essays that examine how theory emerges from stories. In her essay "Living to Tell Stories," P. Jane Hafen argues that we should seek out and employ literary criticism that does not perpetuate colonization. She resists several of the standard labels utilized in Western theory by asserting: "we are not postmodern or modern, we are not postcolonial. We are not trapped between two worlds. As twenty-first-century indigenous peoples, we are survivors" (39). Rob Appleford asks: "How is it possible to be at once a cultural conservationist and an artistic experimenter?" (44). Appleford uses Ray A. Young Bear's experimental autobiography Black Eagle Child to examine this seeming paradox. In "Uncomprehended Mysteries: Language and Legend in the Writing of Zitkala-Sa and Mourning Dove," Harry Brown argues that by combining legend and autobiography Mourning Dove and Zitkala-Sa create a practical means to address the issues surrounding translatability and make intercultural connections. Like Appleford, Elvira Pulitano addresses issues related to autobiography. She uses Gerald Vizenor's autobiography and poetry within the context of current debates related to interaction between the creative writer and the critic, suggesting that his work is autocritical. In her essay "Ignatia Broker's Lived Feminism: Toward a Native Women's Theory," Molly McGlennen examines the deficiencies of Western feminist theory in relation to American Indian literature. She argues that an empowering and useful theory of "lived feminism" emerges from Ignatia Broker's Night Flying Woman.

The second section "Critical Traces" contains five individual essays. In "A Sovereignty of Transmotion: Imagination and the 'Real,' Gerald Vizenor, and Native Literary Nationalism," Niigonwedom (now Niigaanwewidam) James Sinclair breaks new ground with his argument that Gerald Vizenor's work, specifically Heirs of Columbus, "can be applied to current material struggles of Indigenous (and specifically Anishinaabeg) sovereignty and self-determination" (128). Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez uses the poetry of Simon J. Ortiz to answer several critical questions relating to community, place, "home," and relationships to land. Silvia Martínez-Falquina draws upon Gordon Henry Jr.'s fictional and autobiographical narratives to show that reading the texts for the theories they offer can lead to the transformation of the reader. In his essay "Bearheart: Gerald Vizenor's Compassionate Novel," Michael Wilson argues that Bearheart is the embodiment of a hybrid...