Gerald Vizenor: Texts and Contexts ed. by Deborah L. Madsen and A. Robert Lee (review)

In Gerald Vizenor: Texts and Contexts, Deborah L. Madsen and A. Robert Lee bring together an impressive list of contributors in their “overview of the current state of Vizenor scholarship” (2). Overall, this collection succeeds in its attempt to “give due evidence” to the complexity of Vizenor’s oeuvre, providing an insightful contribution to the ever-expanding body of work on an author whose influence has “repositioned the interpretation of Native life and art” (1). The editors position the volume as a complement to the existing body of Vizenor scholarship and take up the challenge of providing analysis of Vizenor’s recent works while situating his achievements within a broader set of theoretical, literary, cultural, and historical contexts.

The collection is organized both thematically and loosely chronologically; the six essays in part 1, “Texts,” provide textual analysis of individual works as they move back in time from Vizenor’s recent publications, while the seven essays in part 2, “Contexts,” move forward in time as they expand the focus outward from single texts to broader methodological analysis and comparative studies. The volume ends by bringing in Vizenor himself as a commentator on his most recent work in part 3, “Vizenor Works,” which consists of an interview of Vizenor by Lee, the recently ratified Constitution of the White Earth Nation, largely drafted by Vizenor himself, and an essay by Vizenor explaining the circumstances behind the creation of the constitution.

In both “Texts” and “Contexts,” contributors insightfully engage with key terms and concepts that Vizenor’s work has brought to the forefront of Native American studies. A. Robert Lee’s essay explores the role of “storying” in Vizenor’s 2008 novella Father Meme; Jill Doerfleur, Drew Lopinzina, and Linda Lizut Helstern all engage with Vizenor’s notion of “survivance”; Doerfleur and Michael Snyder take up the idea of “postindian”; while David L. Moore examines Vizenor’s poetry in the context of Native presence. The volume also engages with larger theoretical influences, most notably, postmodern thinkers such as Derrida, Lacan, and Bataille in essays by Snyder, Moore, Madsen, and Kathryn W. Shanley; writers who deal with atrocities such as Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt in Lee and Shanley’s essays on Father Meme; and Vizenor’s Japanese influences in Alan R. Velie’s essay on Hiroshima Bugi. The impressive collection of analysis speaks to Vizenor’s own expansive body of work as well as the influence he has had both inside and outside the academy.

The collection starts with A. Robert Lee’s engaging essay, which situates Vizenor as “storier” in Father Meme, a story that creates its own narrative mode, a combination of fact and fiction produced by an exacting attention to composition. Lee elucidates how this “fact-fiction” mode is delivered through the “I-you” narrative construction that shapes the design of the story, “the one voice harboring two” (13). He compares this text to Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, other texts that have conveyed stories of atrocity, and his essay aptly combines explication of the text, analysis of the narrator’s shared perspective, and readings of the historical figures and events that are woven throughout Father Meme.

Some highlights from the collection include Alan R. Velie’s “Pacifists, Tricksters, Writers, and Victims in Hiroshima Bugi,” in which Velie engages with Vizenor’s concept of “tragic victimry” as he takes into account both the narrative’s insistence on the culpability of specific Japanese people (e.g., the emperor, Hirohito, the Japanese Nationalists, and the wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo) and its implication of Japanese culture in the aggressive nationalism with which Vizenor contextualizes the bombing of Hiroshima. Velie’s extensive engagement with Vizenor’s Japanese influences is helpful in elucidating Vizenor’s interest in and personal connection to Japanese culture but at times comes at the expense of more detailed readings of the narrative itself in a section...