Contemporary American Indian writing

Booknews

Starting with the premise that American Indians have been colonized, Horne (English, U. of Northern British Columbia) warns against colonial mimicry. She offers as an alternative a theory of subversive mimicry through which writers can use the language of the colonial power to subvert it and inscribe diverse native voices. She looks at the work of Thomas King, Beatrice Culleton, Ruby Slipperjack, and others. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Jo-Anne Fiske

"What is so strategic and vital about Contemporary American Indian Writing is that it celebrates artistic deployment of subversive mimicry in all its expression of parody, satire, wit, and pathos. Deftly weaving theoretical paradigms with the voices of Native American writers, Dee Horne invites us to follow the writers' ‘dance along the colonial precipice' and in so doing to embrace an understanding of the value of subversive mimicry to all writers as a powerful disruption of established theoretical approaches that cling to binary oppositions that are now reaching a tiresome level of pedestrian predictability."-- Associate Professor Department of Anthropology and Women's Studies The University of Northern British Columbia

Reuben Ellis

"Dee Horne's Contemporary American Indian Writing may be the most important contribution to Native American/First Nations Studies in recent years. It provides a much-needed theoretical framework for understanding the cultural roots, the variety, and the hybridity of Indian literatures. In an analysis that is both scholarly and invitingly readable, Horne deftly challenges cultural essentialism and the marginalization of Indian experiences and perspectives. Contemporary American Indian Writing unsettles many of the easy and persistent assumptions about Indian literatures and does so both usefully and excitingly."-- Editor of Stories and Stone: Writing the Anasazi Homeland