Books

I'm very excited for the upcoming semester in part due to the wide variety of literature that we will be exploring. I have always enjoyed young adult literature because it is always just so fun to read. Our coursepack readings for the week about Native American literature really interested me. I found it rather incredible that such a small percentage of Native American literature is actually written by Native Americans. Do we feel like Native American stories have become more like lore than true stories? This seems to relate back to young children refusing to believe that there are still Indians in this country even though they do not wear "traditional" outfits. I never really realized that there was that perception among many children because growing up near several reservations there were several Native Americans that attended my school. Many of them still celebrated their history and would attend pow-wows and they would explain it to the rest of the students. When I read Heart of a Chief, our novel for this week, I thought it was good that the book was placed in present time so that students could identify with the main character more. Then I read another one of our coursepack readings that talked about how it was initially difficult to get her story published because her stories involved Native Americans but that was not the focal point of the story. The editors were not impressed because the character was middle class which did not fit in with the stereotype. This led me to question the image that the novel put forth of the people living on the reservation all being very poor. Now I'm not sure if it's further perpetuating a stereotype or not.