CIRCA:JaceWeaver, "Native American Authors and Their Communities.”

From CIRCA

JaceWeaver, "Native American Authors and Their Communities", Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 47-87.

This paper opposes the view of genuine Native literature as oral myth only by stating the fact that even when Native writer adopt a western form of writing, namely, short stories or novels, they still operate under the Native worldview that is communal and as the author termed it, communism. (52)This coinage carried the sense of community, activism and activists. What defines Native literature is this very sense of community and the commitment to it. The effect of this community oriented literature would be for the healing of the grief and sense of exile felt by Native communities and to function as a means of struggle. With this understanding of the Native literature not in the form of oral tradition, the author thus provided some Native writers such as Peter Jones, E. Pauline Johnson, Lynn Riggs, and Leslie Marmon Silko and examined their life and work to show how they all worked for the same purpose of achieving communism throughout different eras.