Transatlantic Voices: Interpretations of Native North American Literatures

Transatlantic Voices is the first collection of critical essays by European scholars on contemporary Native North American literatures. Devoted to the primary genres of Native  literature—fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry—the essays chart the course of recent theories of Native literature, delineate the crosscurrents in the history of Native literature studies, and probe specific themes of trauma and memory as well as changing mythologies. These essays also incorporate incipient transnational and transcultural methodologies in their approach to Native North American writing. Blending western critical approaches—from cultural studies to postcolonialism and trauma theory—with indigenous epistemological perspectives, the contributors to Transatlantic Voices advocate “the inescapable hybridity and intermixture of ideas” proposed by Paul Gilroy in his study of black diasporic identity. Native North American writers forcefully suggest that the study of American ethnicities in the twenty-first century can no longer be confined to the borders of the United States. Given the increasing transnational aspect of American studies, a collection such as Transatlantic Voices, presenting scholars from countries as diverse as Germany, France, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Finland, offers a timely contribution to such border crossing in scholarship and writing. 

Table of Contents:
Contents   Acknowledgments   Introduction      Elvira Pulitano, California Polytechnic State University   Part 1. Theoretical Crossings 1. "They Have Stories, Don't They?": Some Doubts Regarding an Overused Theorem      Hartwig Isernhagen, Universität Basel 2. Plotting History: The Function of History in Native North American Literature    Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, Université Michel de MontaigneBordeaux 3 3. Transculturality and Transdifference: The Case of Native America     Helmbrecht Breinig, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg   Part 2. From Early Fiction to Recent Directions 4. American Indian Novels of the 1930s: John Joseph Mathews's Sundown and D'Arcy McNickle's Surrounded  Gaetano Prampolini, Università di Firenze 5. Transatlantic Crossings: New Directions in the Contemporary Native American Novel      Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Technische Universität Dresden   Part 3. Trauma, Memory, and Narratives of Healing   6. Of Time and Trauma: The Possibilities for Narrative in Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Owned the Shadows Deborah L. Madsen, Université de Genève 7. "Keep Wide Awake in the Eyes": Seeing Eyes in Wendy Rose's Poetry Kathryn Napier Gray, University of Plymouth 8. Anamnesiac Mappings: National Histories and Transnational Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead    Rebecca Tillett, University of East Anglia   Part 4. Comparative Mythologies, Transatlantic Journeys   9. Vizenor's Trickster Theft: Pretexts and Paratexts of Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart Paul Beekman Taylor, Université de Genève 10. "June Walked over It like Water and Came Home": Cross-Cultural Symbolism in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Tracks  Mark Shackleton, University of Helsinki 11. Encounters across Time and Space: The Sacred, the Profane, and the Political in Linda Hogan's Power     Yonka Krasteva, University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria 12. Double Translation: James Welch's Heartsong of Charging Elk   Ulla Haselstein, Freie Universität Berlin 13. Clown, Indians, and Poodles: Spectacular Others in Louis Owens's I Hear the Train    Simone Pellerin, Université Paul-ValéryMontpellier III 14. Oklahoma International: Jim Barnes, Poetry, and the Sites of Imagination  A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Tokyo   List of Contributors   Index