Jane Johnston Schoolcraft Analysis

Being a Native American writer, Joy Harjo, according to the research followed a different path from her Western colleagues. The oral tradition of her legacy is very significant to her expression and poetic vision. In Joy’s poem “She Had Some Horses” she displayed the usage of chant form that showed her commitment to her Native culture and its traditions. Joy Harjo was a part of an oppressed minority that was mistreated and almost ruined. Many of the events that influenced her works were the concerns of spiritual, personal, and cultural survival. One of the ways of survival for the Native culture was through the storytelling. In “She Had Some Horses” was a mere reflection on Joy’s struggle to survive as a Native American woman in an intimidating society. Many of those events were important within this poem because it seems to have given a silent woman the chance to speak and tell her story along with a way for Native American women to make a mark in the eyes of the world as an individual of importance and value (Harjo, 2012).

I choose to do my independent investigation on the reading Invocation by Jane Schoolcraft. Reading invocation the theme that stood out to me was culture. As I first started analyzing the reading by the first stanza I knew what the poem was aiming towards culture. The poem also had relation to what we previously discussed in our first week of class, being native literature. I got this sense as I read, “ Rise bravest chief! Of the mark of the noble deer” typically when in literature if one says chief you think native, but also someone in high demand and authority. The analysis and interpretation I made on this poem was the author Jane Schoolcraft expresses the fearfulness and honor she had for the chief as she says “ Have dared with black envy

The attitudes of the writers from the early Native American literature to the 21st century tell stories of the times in which they lived. Eastman is telling the events of Indian life, tradition, culture while living during the events of American Indians maintaining their lifestyle with the new settlers. “The Hunt, the war of the tribes, honoring tradition and most of all the acknowledgment of “The Great Mystery,” in which the lands and the people came to be(Eastman, 2008), describes the life of the Indians on the plains. Later writers such as Hunt wrote of the turmoil between the New government and the Native American tribes fighting for their right of sovereignty (Jackson, 1889), for a land they possessed before the new government. Her writing

Louise Erdrich is an author that specializes in writing literature that features Native American characters, the Chippewa Nation, and multicultural backgrounds. This stems from the fact that Erdrich herself is of Native American and German descent. Erdrich knows what she writes and has developed a particular writing style that is flavored by strong characterization and a careful focus on thematic features. (” Reading between Worlds: Narrativity in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich”.) By far, though, her real strength lies within her use of symbolism to represent important

“Katherine O’Flaherty was born in St. Lois, Missouri, to a Creole-Irish family that enjoyed a high place in society. Her father died when she was four, and Kate was raised by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Very well read at young age, she received her formal education at the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. In 1870, she married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana businessman, and lived with him in Natchitoches parish and New Orleans, where she became a close observer of Creole and Cajun life. Following her husband’s sudden death in 1884 she returned to St. Louis, where she raised her six children and began her literary career. In slightly more than a decade she produced a substantial body work, including the story collection Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897) and the classic novella The Awakening (1899), which was greeted with a storm of criticism for its frank treatment of female sexuality” (Mays 439).

In 2007, the award-winning novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, was written and published by successful screenwriter, film producer, and author, Sherman Alexie; the novel follows the journey of hydrocephalic Native American teenager Arnold Spirit Jr, as he attends an all-white off-reservation public high school in the town of Reardan, Washington. The story’s exploration of controversial issues such as alcoholism, poverty, bullying, violence, as well as the use of profanity and slurs compels its audience to consider the horrifying reality of the native American experience in contemporary society and authentically examines Arnold’s personal struggle to discover his identity. The novel expertly explores important overarching themes such as poverty, racism, and hope through the use of imagery, symbolism, and setting.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the author examines the importance of family and community. Alexie succeeds in shattering the stereotype of Native Americans as a broken community by emphasizing key events that show that they are still a close-knit society, despite the impact of poverty and alcohol.

As Americans have become divided in recent times, what it means to be an American has also changed. In “Hunger of Memory”, author Richard Rodriguez examines how language affects his family relationships. For Langston Hughes, being an American means to postpone dreams or have them become something else entirely. Rodriguez states that his parents spoke a hesitant, accented English, he feels acknowledged when others speak to him in Spanish, (third paragraph). In “A Dream Deferred”, poet Langston Hughes compares his “American Dream” to a heavy load that sags. In Richard Rodriguez’s “Hunger of Memory”, the author discusses how he and his family view a dark complexion as a burden, unattractive, and as a sign of poverty or low status.

The Absolutely True diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie, is a semi-autobiographical novel that narrates the story of a Native American teenager. The narrative uses ‘humour to soften the sometimes difficult and emotional story’ of the protagonist, Arnold ‘Junior’ Spirit who was born with ‘water on the brain’ and is constantly targeted by bullies. The main themes that is carried throughout the novel is isolation as well as determination. These themes are expanded on with many of Arnold’s life events. Throughout the novel there are many narrative features; some of these are focalisation, diction, imagery and point of view. All of these narrative features positions the reader on how native Americans are seen as a lower class than white people as they are poorer than the white people.

First let's start with the author Sherman Alexie he is a fellow Native American he is from the Coeur d'Alene tribe and Sherman was born in Spokane, Washington and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Now they are some connections here the main character of this story is Native American too he is also him Spokane and was living on a reservation. “On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City” was published in 1993 and around that time things was happening to Native Americans, the weekend of Columbus day in 1992 Native Americans was protesting 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s inauguration of “The Age of Discovery.” Many cities had protests, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, even Mexico City in Mexico. In 1993 the United States passed the Native American Free Exercise of Religion Act, and the Act grants Native Americans to practice their religion freely on their land without government or anyone bothering them. All these ups and downs were happening to Native Americans people at this time, so these ups and downs might have influenced Sherman Alexie in writing this poem. And made him want to bring up the concerns of Native Americans, these concerns may be, Native Americans was here first and should be known for that instead of being pushed out of

Yet, all three authors are often desiring inclusiveness of things left out in the mainstream in order for society to find the “truth.” Calloway espouses attention towards Native American primary sources

When we ask ourselves what makes us American, we must look to our past. As a United States settler, we each have a job to fulfill in this country. We view ourselves as the alpha and as a beautiful country. North American writers have had a crucial influence on modern day citizens with dissertations like the Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key, John F. Kennedy’s Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, and the story about Pocahontas by Paula Gunn Allen.

The years that led up to the Civil War saw many of America’s ethnic minorities publishing histories, poems, novels, and autobiographies. These pieces of literature were based on the fact that they felt like outsiders in a society that was both mainly white and Protestant. “The result was a unique body of ethnic writing chronicling the distinctive experience and changing self-image of ethnic Americans” (Digital History, 2014). Without these authors drawing inspiration from their experiences, or even flat-out writing about what they went through, we would not know a great deal of the United States’ history.

Native American authors often share common themes that stem from life on reservations; these include poverty, violence, abuse, and alcoholism. Sherman Alexie, a Native American from Spokane, Washington, is not only one of these authors, but she may be the most successful and well-known Native American writer who contributes these themes. Alexie often made strong attempts to portray life as a Native American in her short stories in novels. For her, it was about depicting the Native American experience. she does just that in her short story collection, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” Alexie uses literary elements, such as themes, symbolism, and imagery to further aid her overall message of what life is like growing up and living on a reservation. These experiences, as she demonstrates, contrast sharply with those of white society, as they cannot fathom a similar culture.

Kenneth Lincoln has called Louise Erdrich as the most significant Native writers of the second wave of the ‘Native American Renaissance’. Her novels got recognised when her first novel Love Medicine (1984) got National Book Critics Circle Award. After that she continued her charm of wonderful story about Native Americans lives. In her novels, we witness the Native American life, their way of living, culture, spiritual connections with the land, healing process of people’s lives, and the wisdom of the old people. Louise Erdrich tells the story of Ojibwe families who live near a reservation in North Dakota.