The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and Indigenous Mexico
James H. Cox
Abstract
The forty years of American Indian literature taken up in this book—the decades between 1920 and 1960—have been called politically and intellectually moribund. On the contrary, this book identifies a group of American Indian writers who share an interest in the revolutionary potential of the indigenous peoples of Mexico—and whose work demonstrates a surprisingly assertive literary politics in the era. By contextualizing this group of American Indian authors in the work of their contemporaries, this book reveals how the literary history of this period is far more rich and nuanced than is genera ... More
The forty years of American Indian literature taken up in this book—the decades between 1920 and 1960—have been called politically and intellectually moribund. On the contrary, this book identifies a group of American Indian writers who share an interest in the revolutionary potential of the indigenous peoples of Mexico—and whose work demonstrates a surprisingly assertive literary politics in the era. By contextualizing this group of American Indian authors in the work of their contemporaries, this book reveals how the literary history of this period is far more rich and nuanced than is generally acknowledged. The writers it focuses on—Todd Downing (Choctaw), Lynn Riggs (Cherokee), and D’Arcy McNickle (Confederated Salish and Kootenai)—are shown to be on par with writers of the preceding Progressive and the succeeding Red Power and Native American literary renaissance eras. Arguing that American Indian literary history of this period actually coheres in exciting ways with the literature of the Native American literary renaissance, the book repudiates the intellectual and political border that has emerged between the two eras.
Keywords:
American Indian literature,
American Indian writers,
Mexico,
literary politics,
American Indian authors,
Native American literary renaissance
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816675975 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816675975.001.0001 |
