Native Americans - Biography, US & Canadian Literary Biography, Literary Biography

$I Hear the Train: Reflections, Inventions, Refractions by Louis Owens — book cover$

I Hear the Train: Reflections, Inventions, Refractions

Name: I Hear the Train: Reflections, Inventions, Refractions
Author: Louis Owens
ISBN: 9780806133546

by Louis Owens

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Overview

In this innovative collection, Louis Owens blends autobiography, short fiction, and literary criticism to reflect on his experiences as a mixedblood Indian in America.

In sophisticated prose, Owens reveals the many timbres of his voice--humor, humility,love, joy, struggle, confusion, and clarity. We join him in the fields, farms, and ranches of California. We follow his search for a lost brother and contemplate along with him old family photographs from Indian Territory and early Oklahoma. In a final section, Owens reflects on the work and theories of other writers, including Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Gerald Vizenor, Michael Dorris, and Louise Erdrich.

Volume 40 in the American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series

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Editorials

N. Scott Momaday

Here are the indispensable surfaces of literature, each one the gleaming facet of a rare gem.

Library Journal

In each section of this excellent collection, Owens's carefully crafted writing captures the reader with exceptional descriptions of place and people, the mix of native blood in America, and the strength of the individual: "He'd awakened to the river, rising out of sleep the way the winter river rose from its brushy bed, hearing before anything the throbbing of the current under the sand, his eyes opening to the sun caught like blood in the naked branches of the sycamores and cottonwoods out here in the river." In the autobiographical section, Owens (e.g., Dark River) describes his service on a hotshot fire-fighting crew in Arizona and later working at Glacier National Park. His quest to locate his brother and his visit with him captures the enormity of family, the Vietnam War, and the bond of brothers who grew up hunting and fishing for dinner. Then a collection of well-crafted short stories is followed by a final section in which Owens discusses the creations of other writers "who work in the field of native American literature this unsettled zone of frontier, interstitial scholarship." Recommended for all libraries. Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana, Missoula Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.