Authors, P-S

Ron Paquin

Ron Paquin.
Not First in Nobody’s Heart: The Life Story of a Contemporary Chippewa. Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1992.
Call Number: E 99 .C6 P377 1992

Chippewa Ron Paquin grew up in the north woods of Michigan’s Mackinac Straits area. Victim of an abusive childhood, Paquin felt compelled to recount his personal journey through prisons and institutions to an eventual peace and acceptance of his identity. The narrative was transcribed by a prison cellmate, then recorded on tape, and finished in a 10-year collaboration with scholar Robert Doherty.

General Collection, Golda Meir Library

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W. S. Penn

W. S. Penn, 1949- .
All My Sins are Relatives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Author’s Signed Presentation Copy to the Golda Meir Library.
Call Number: (SPL) E 99 .N5 P467 1995

W. S. Penn is of Nez Perce/Osage descent. An associate professor of English at Michigan State University, he is a member of the National Advisory Council on Native American Writing and the Native Writers circle.

In his autobiographical second novel, All My Sins Are Relatives, Penn finds in his own family three generations trying to come to terms with their Indianness. Penn comes to an understanding and respect of his Indian grandfather’s teachings, discovering writing as a way to return to the storytelling traditions of his grandfather. All My Sins Are Relatives chronicles Penn’s personal evolution as a storyteller, bridging the gap between two cultures

Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

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Simon Pokagon

Simon Pokagon, 1830-1899.
O-gi-maw-kwe mit-i-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods). [Also a Brief Sketch of the Algaic Language by Chief Pokagon..Biography of the Chief, by the publisher]. Hartford, Michigan: C.H. Engle, 1899.
Call Number: (SPL) E 90 .P7 P7

This is an autobiographical novel by Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon, who was involved in securing payment for the sale of Potawatomi land that became Chicago and its environs. The claim was settled in 1896, three years before Pokagon died, and this novel was published posthumously.

The book includes a brief sketch of the Algaic language, an address given by Pokagon, and a number of obituaries. An uncommon and important early Native American novel, it is considered the first American Indian novel devoted to Indian life.

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Wendy Rose

Wendy Rose, 1948- .
Builder Kachina: A Going Home Cycle. Marvin, South Dakota: Blue Cloud Quarterly, 1979.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 509 .I5 B59 Vol. 25, no. 4

Wendy Rose’s poetry is an assertion of identity, as a Native American and as a woman, against the dehumanizing force of capitalism. Rose was estranged from her Hopi-Miwok father, and traveled to Arizona to visit him in August 1977; the celebratory Builder Kachina chronicles this voyage back to find herself. Like much of her work, it is illustrated by the author, and the drawings add an additional dimension to her poems. Rose has published nine volumes of poetry, served as editor of The American Indian Quarterly, worked in academia as an anthropologist, and is currently compiling a bibliography of Native American writings.

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Cheryl Savageau

Cheryl Savageau, 1950- .
Dirt Road Home: Poems. Willimantic, Conn.: Curbstone Press, 1995.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3569 .A836 D5 1995

French Canadian Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau writes on the themes of poverty, mixed ancestry, nature, and family. Her Abenaki heritage supplies a celebratory feminist vision to her work. The introduction is supplied by Joseph Bruchac, a mentor to Savageau who now lives and works in Massachusetts.

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Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko, 1948- .
After a Summer Rain in the Upper Sonoran. [Madison]: Printed by Black Mesa Press for Woodland Pattern, 1984.
Call Number: (SPL-Broadsides) PS 3569 .I44 A65x 1984

Leslie Marmon Silko, 1948- .
The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko & James Wright. Saint Paul, Minn.: Greywolf Press, 1986.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3569 .I44 Z49x 1986

Leslie Marmon Silko’s first exposure to wide readership came in the 1974 anthology The Man to Send Rain Clouds. Silko’s early work combines elements of traditional Native American storytelling with the standard Western-genre form of the novel or short story. As an individual of mixed heritage--Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and white--Silko acknowledged and used elements of each culture, while she herself was an outsider to all of them. As such, her perception is remarkably individual and free from cliches. It was through her ability to create characters who were alienated from both mainstream society and their own cultures that she not only created compelling stories and characters, but came to be regarded as a voice for the disenfranchised. Her first book, Laguna Woman, a collection of poems published by Joseph Bruchac’s Greenfield Review Press, is quite rare, and has yet to be reprinted.

Her writings appear widely in anthologies, although now more overtly "political," and more explicitly "Indian." For a writer whose total literary output over 25 years is relatively small, Silko has had enormous influence in helping to define the parameters of a Native American literature that avails itself of Western forms and the written word at the same time that it draws on tribal oral traditions.

Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

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