English 11 / Unit 6: Contemporary American Literature
6.4 Native American Literary Renaissance
Notes
In the late 1900s many Native authors gained wide readership, writing from within their own cultures.
- N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. It follows a Native veteran who returns home and struggles to reconnect with his community and land, drawing on oral tradition and ceremony.
- Louise Erdrich writes interwoven novels about families on and near reservations, using multiple narrators.
- Sherman Alexie's young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) follows a teenager who leaves his reservation school for a mostly white school, mixing humor and cartoons to explore belonging.
- These works link back to oral tradition (Unit 1): storytelling, community and the land remain central.
- Worked example: using multiple narrators echoes the communal, many-voiced nature of oral storytelling.
Practice
Which feature shows how contemporary Native writers connect to oral tradition?
These works draw on oral storytelling traditions.
Why might Erdrich use multiple narrators?
Many voices reflect shared storytelling.
A teen narrator moves between his reservation and a new school and uses humor and drawings to cope. This most closely resembles which work?
The description matches Alexie's novel.
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