New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism ed. by Arnold Krupat (review)

Reviews 341 tion corrupts, distorts reality, and encourages hypocrisy.” Beyond this, Vallin offers such insights as “Twain’s use of the ship metaphor seems to indicate his sense of individualism. We are all pilots of our own ships, with the free will to chart our own courses.”And these “profundities”are themselves quite few and far between. Vallin sets forth many large (and some potentially interesting) claims, but she presents very little development of or evidence for her assertions. For example, she claims that “the focus of Twain’s performance was on the audi­ ence, specifically the interaction between speaker and listeners,” but no real discussion of this idea or analysis of Twain’s speeches with this point in mind ever materializes. We are led, by the editors of this series, to expect “a complete analysis of a speaker’s rhetoric,” which will investigate “speech invention, style, delivery, organizational strategies, and persuasive effect” for the “public address scholar,”but Vallin’sbook falls far short ofthat aim. Myrecommendation is that you go see Hal Holbrook instead. MICHAEL HOBBS NorthwestMissouri State University New Voicesin Native American Literary Criticism. Edited by Arnold Krupat. (Wash­ ington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. 555 pages, $79.00/$34.95.) In Arnold Krupat’s introductory unapologetic apology, he explains that presenting a volume of eclectic essays on Native American literatures is still useful and necessary even though some academics may prefer more “post”minded approaches. New generations of students, new sources and translations of literatures, and new Native and international scholars are adding constantly to the field. Thus this volume is not “consistent or unified in subject matter, method, perspective, or mode of discourse”; yet these essays add fresh, com­ plex, and sophisticated narratives and analyses to the field of Native American literary criticism. Further, contributors have worked on materials from South America, Mexico, the United States, and the Canadian Arctic. The volume is divided into three sections. Part 1: PERFORMANCES AND TEXTS includes Geoffrey Kimaball on Koasati narrative, Ridie Wilson Ghezzi on Ojibwe storytelling, Janet Hendricks on Shuar war stories, Jay Fikes on Huichol funeral-ritual oratory, Hans-Ulrich Sanner on Hopi clown songs, Perry Shearwood on Inuit writing, and Miguel Leon-Portilla on Nahuatl poets. Part II: AUTHORS AND ISSUES includes Wolfgang Hochbruck on Choctaw author Todd Downing, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay on Sarah Winnemucca, William Willard on “an anthropology ofanthropology”ofsouthwestern places, Alanna Kathleen Brown on “the editorialized Mourning Dove,” Celeste River on the writings of Frank Bird Linderman, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard and Kimberly Blaeser on 342 WesternAmerican Literature Gerald Vizenor, David Moore on “postcolonial praxis”in Silko and Young Bear, and Shamoon Zamir on Leslie Silko. Part III: ETHNOCRITIQUES includes Greg Sards on Elizabeth Colson and “hearing the old ones talk,”Jana Sequoya on “how (!) is an Indian?: a contest of stories,” Clifford Trafzer on “the first history of the Americas,”Katherine McNamara on “writing and meaning in the work of Peter Kalifomsky,” Kathleen Danker on Felix White, Sr. and the Winnebago trickster, and Crisca Bierwert on “the translative commentary of MartinJ. Sampson.” The selections demonstrate an unusual awareness of the interaction be­ tween performance and text, author and translator, Native correspondent and academic reader, teacher and student, and contributor, editor, and even advi­ sory board member. Krupat writes that “some students of Native American literatures, in common with most of those who study the cultural expression of other marginalized or subordinated groups in America, increasingly have shown acute concern for the usefulness of their work not only to their col­ leagues, but as well to those about whom they speak.” It is this sense of multifarious “consultation” that adds unexpected density and texture to this excellent collection. GRETCHEN RONNOW Wayne State College White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. By June Namias. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. 378 pages, $39.95/ $16.95.) June Namias’new book on the histories, stories, and visual representations of Indian captivity in North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries participates in the recent resurgence ofinterest in captivity narratives among historians and literary critics. The book is an impressive compilation of evidence of how compelling Euro-Americans have found such stories over...