Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography

by Hertha Dawn Wong

Overview

Using contemporary autobiography theory and literary, historical, and ethnographic approaches, Wong explores the transformation of Native American autobiography from pre-contact oral and pictographic personal narratives through late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century life histories to written contemporary autobiographies. This book expands the definition of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self, highlighting the incorporation of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography and charting the historical transition from orality to literacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195361605
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/12/1992
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
1	Native American Self-Narration and Autobiography Theory	11
	Native American Concepts of Self, Life, and Language	13
	The Web of Self-Narration: Native American and Euro-American Autobiographical Traditions	20
2	Pre-Contact Oral and Pictographic Autobiographical Narratives: Coup Tales, Vision Stories, and Naming Practices	25
	Coup Tales	26
	Nineteenth-Century Plains Indian Names and Autobiography	37
3	Pictographs as Autobiography: Plains Indian Sketchbooks, Diaries, and Text Construction	57
	Sketchbooks of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	58
	A Cheyenne Diarist and Indigenous Text Production	77
4	Literary Boundary Cultures: The Life Histories of Plenty-Coups, Pretty-Shield, Sam Blowsnake, and Mountain Wolf Woman	88
	Two Crow Life Histories	91
	Two Winnebago Life Histories	104
	Performance, Ceremony, and Self-Narration	113
5	Oral and Written Collaborative Autobiography: Nicholas Black Elk and Charles Alexander Eastman	117
	Nicholas Black Elk	118
	Charles Alexander Eastman	139
6	Contemporary Innovations of Oral Traditions: N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko	153
	N. Scott Momaday	155
	Leslie Marmon Silko	186
	Conclusion	196
	Notes	201
	Works Cited	225
	Index	237

Editorial Reviews

"A remarkable synthesis....Well written, well organized, and insightful....A book that will endure on the shelves of those who work in the fields of American-Indian history, American-Indian literature, oral history, and in the fields of biography and autobiography in the United States."—Florida Historical Review

"Numerous photographs of pictographs not only illustrate [Wong's] argument but also provide the reader with an excellent sample of this very interesting but not readily available material....Wong's study opens up rewarding new avenues in the study of Native American autobiography."—North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains

"A serious study that helps readers to better understand the evolution of Native American life and literature."—Magill Book Reviews

"A welcome addition to previous books on the subject....Sending My Heart Back Across the Years contains useful, engaging, nontechnical discussion of several Plains autobiographers and their work."—American Literature

"An excellent scholarly work by Professor Wong. It provides for cross cultural understanding through synthesis as well as analysis rather than static academic narrative."—The Chronicles of Oklahoma

From the Publisher