Native American Fiction: A User's Manual

An entirely new approach to reading, understanding, and enjoying Native American fiction

This book has been written with the narrow conviction that if Native American literature is worth thinking about at all, it is worth thinking about as literature. The vast majority of thought that has been poured out onto Native American literature has puddled, for the most part, on how the texts are positioned in relation to history or culture.

Rather than create a comprehensive cultural and historical genealogy for Native American literature, David Treuer investigates a selection of the most important Native American novels and, with a novelist's eye and a critic's mind, examines the intricate process of understanding literature on its own terms.

Native American Fiction: A User's Manual is speculative, witty, engaging, and written for the inquisitive reader. These essays--on Sherman Alexie, Forrest Carter, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch--are rallying cries for the need to read literature as literature and, ultimately, reassert the importance and primacy of the word.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 08/22/2006
ISBN: 9781555974527
Pages: 212
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.38w x 0.65d

Review Citations: Booklist 09/15/2006 pg. 16