American Gypsy: Six Native American Plays

by Diane Glancy

Overview

In American Gypsy, a collection of six plays, Diane Glancy uses a mélange of voices to invoke the myths and realities of modern Native American life. Glancy intermixes poetry and prose to address themes of gender, generational relationships, acculturation, myth, and tensions between Christianity and traditional Native American belief systems.

The six plays included, “The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance,” “The Women Who Loved House Trailers,” “American Gypsy,” “Jump Kiss,” “Lesser Wars,” and “The Toad (Another Name for the Moon) Should Have a Bite,” run the gamut from monologues to multi-character pieces and vary in length from fifteen minutes to over an hour. Glancy concludes the collection with a thought-provoking essay on Native American playwriting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806143194
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	08/05/2012
Series:	American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series , #45
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Diane Glancy is Professor of English at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. She has received the Cherokee Medal of Honor from the Cherokee Honor Society. She is also an award-winning author of poetry, short stories, and plays. Her works include War Cries, a collection of plays, and Firesticks and The Voice That Was in Travel, both short story collections published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Her collection of essays, Claiming Breath, won the North American Indian Prose Award and an American Book Award.

Editorial Reviews

The prolific author of novels, short stories, and poems as well as plays, Glancy (English, Macalester Coll.) is the recipient of the Cherokee Medal of Honor, among other awards. Her overriding interests and vivid use of language are equally on display in this new collection. Combining poetry and prose, the six plays deal with generational relationships, Native American legends, and tensions between Christianity and Native American beliefs. For instance, "The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance" is a dialog between Grandmother and Granddaughter, each talking about her own ways of life. Similarly, "The Lesser Wars" draws on the Coyote tradition of the trickster, or shape changer, who embodies the contradiction within us. Also included is an essay on Native American playwriting and performance notes on all of the plays. Useful for Native American studies, this volume is also recommended for comprehensive theater arts collections.-Howard Miller, St. Louis Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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