Review of Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak

Authors

Lisa Knopp-Ramsay, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

1994

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 14:1 (Winter 1994). Copyright © 1994 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

If we are to make valid critical interpretations of Native American literature, we must "discover, or rediscover, cultural values other than those rooted in Western aesthetic or individual aesthetic sensibilities," Laura ColtelIi recommends. She provides this perspective through a series of ten "oral autobiographies" (interviews) with contemporary American Indian authors. This format provides a particularly poignant form of self-revelation given the rich oral tradition of First Americans.