Description
Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing is a collection of essays by nine Native American writers edited by Acoma Pueblo writer and storyteller Simon J. Ortiz. Writers include established as well as beginning authors but all find deep connections between their cultural heritage and landscape. Authors include Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Bird, Esther G. Berlin, Roberta J. Hill, A. Hedge Coke, Daniel David Moses, Elizabeth Woody, Jeanette C. Armstrong, and Victor D. Montejo. Canadian authors include Daniel David Moses (Delaware) from Six Nations and Jeanette Armstrong (Okanagan) from Penticton, British Columbia. Armstrong writes about the strong connection with her Okanagan language and the traditional territory of her people. Woven into her essay are English poems that stress this connection. Daniel David Moses writes about his role as playwright and how his particular plays, Almighty Voice and His Wife, Coyote City, and The Dreaming Beauty were developed. Mayan writer Victor D. Montejo writes about serious issues of writing in a military regime and in exile and how he sees his role as writer in a culture with an oral tradition. Editor Simon Ortiz explains the themes that extend throughout each selection from the novelists, playwrights, poets, and scholars. Ortiz notes the interconnection between the land and the writers and the issue of writing from an oral tradition and writing in the English language. Each writer draws from personal and cultural perspectives that have shaped their writing careers. An excellent resource about the role of Indigenous writer from an Aboriginal perspective.