The Native American Renaissance: Literary Imagination and Achievement

In Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, Parins (English, emeritus, assoc. dir., Sequoyah National Research Ctr., Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock) gives a detailed historical account of the development of written language and education systems in the Cherokee Nation during the 19th century, both before and after the Southeastern tribe's removal from west of the Mississippi to Indian Territory. This includes early European missionary attempts at conversion of Cherokees to Christianity and the creation and use of the Sequoyan syllabary alongside English. The prose can be dense, but the importance that Cherokees placed on education and literacy, as a weapon against the constant oppression they were under from European settlers, is made clear. There is also an overview of early influential Cherokee writers. By contrast, The Native American Renaissance, edited by Velie (David Ross Boyd Professor of English, Univ. of Oklahoma; American Indian Literature) and Lee (American Literature, emeritus, Nihon Univ., Tokyo; Native American Writing) is a collection of scholarly essays on the blooming of Native American literary output since the 1960s and the publication of Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn. Included are studies of such well-known writers as Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, and Louise Erdrich.