Graduation Semester and Year

2007

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Kenneth M. Roemer

Abstract

Native American women's autobiographies are complex writings that stretch the very genre itself. As the genre of autobiography is reinvented by both early and contemporary texts, the nature of self expression through that genre is also reinvented. With Leslie Marmon Silko's inventive 1981 autobiography Storyteller as the guide post for what an autobiography can be, I examine other autobiographies by Native American women that come before and after this work, naming some works autobiographies for the first time. Naming a work an autobiography gives credence to the autobiographer's chosen means of writing her life. Native American women reveal who they are in their writing by revealing who their community is. Their choice to focus on their community by mixing genres and voices in their narratives reveals their belief that self cannot be expressed in isolation. This dissertation covers both early autobiographies - Sarah Winnemucca's trail-blazing 1883 autobiography Life Among the Piutes and Zitkala-a's fascinating 1920 autobiography American Indian Stories - and contemporary works -- Silko's influential 1981 Storyteller, Anna Lee Walters' 1992 Talking Indian, which includes many short stories, and Luci Tapahonso's 1993 Sáanii Dahataal/The Women Are Singing, which favors the poetic style. Lastly, this dissertation will examine the 1997 compilation Reinventing the Enemy's Language, edited by Gloria Bird and Joy Harjo. Together under the umbrella of autobiography these works suggest that Native women writers have reinvented not only the genre but the very idea of the self.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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