N. Scott Momaday: Biographical, Literary, And Multicultural Contexts Essay, Research Paper

Kenneth M. Roemer

Momaday & # 8217 ; s Major Works

The Journey of Tai-me. Santa Barbara: Privately Printed, 1967.

House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper & A ; Row, 1968.

The Way to Rainy Mountain. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969.

Angle of Geese and Other Poems. Boston: Godine, 1974.

The Gourd Dancer. New York: Harper & A ; Row, 1976.

The Names: A Memoir. New York: Harper & A ; Row, 1976.

The Ancient Child. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

In the Presence of the Sun: Narratives and Poems, 1961-1991. New York: St. Martin & # 8217 ; s

Imperativeness, 1992.

Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story. Santa Fe: Clear Light, 1994.

The Man Made of Wordss: Essaies, Narratives, Passages. New York: St. Martin & # 8217 ; s Press,

1997.

In the Bear & # 8217 ; s House. New York: St. Martin & # 8217 ; s Press, 1999.

Edited Collection:

The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. New York: Oxford University

Imperativeness, 1965.

Collections of Interviews:

Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. Ed. , Charles L. Woodard.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. Ed. , Matthias Schubnell, Jackson: University

of Mississippi Press, 1997.

Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing. Ed. , Hartwig

Isernhagen. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.

A truism of canon formation: unrecognised literatures need

discovery events to derive attending and legitimacy. For American Indian literatures, the

cardinal event occurred in 1969 when a immature, unknown Kiowa painter, poet, and scholar won a

Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The House Made of Dawn ( 1968 ) . This event is

filled with sarcasms, two of which offer uncovering penetrations about the manner Native American

literatures have gained credence, about the nature of N. Scott Momaday & # 8217 ; s authorship, and

about the significance of modern-day Native American literature.

The most obvious sarcasm is the great hold in acknowledgment of literatures in several

hundred linguistic communications that include centuries, even millennia-old unwritten narrations, ceremony

Holy Eucharists, and autobiographical histories, every bit good as histories, essays, autobiographies,

poesy, and fiction written in English. The hold reflects non merely the power of cultural

winkers, but besides a 19th- and 20th-century disciplinary territorialism that placed

American indians within the anthropologist & # 8217 ; s and, on occasion, the historian & # 8217 ; s cantonment. Of class,

the discovery suggests the importance of the 1960 & # 8217 ; s committedness to civil rights and

cultural surveies. It besides reflects another truism: literary critics and instructors of

literature tend to acknowledge illustrations of “ new ” literatures that are different

plenty to look Authentically Other but familiar plenty to be incorporated into current

interpretative discourses. House Made of Dawn fulfilled these two demands

wondrous. The genuinely different quotient was provided by the focal point on a Jemez

Pueblo supporter and two important types of Indian scenes ( Jemez Pueblo in New

Mexico and an urban resettlement centre, Los Angeles ) ; by the usage of English diversions of

unwritten literatures, both specific ( Kiowa narrative, Jemez rite, Navajo vocal ) and general

( the handbill construction of the novel ) ; and by the authorization of an Indian writer who

“ looked Indian, ” was a “ certified ” tribal member ( Kiowa ) , and had a

fantastic public presentation manner and voice. Accessibility came from the usage of a familiar and

popular genre ( the novel ) and from attractively crafted sentences that could repeat

Hemingway & # 8217 ; s concentration, Faulkner & # 8217 ; s watercourse of consciousness, and the Bible ( the

supporter & # 8217 ; s name is Abel ) .

House Made of Dawn & # 8217 ; s rich integratings of unwritten and written literatures suggest

another sarcasm of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, one that offers specific penetrations into Momaday & # 8217 ; s

fiction and poesy and into the significance of modern-day Native American fiction and

poesy in general. House Made of Dawn is routinely associated with

“ Indian ” or “ Native American ” literatures. These labels, though utile

and appropriate, be given to befog two dimensions of the multiculturalism ( multitribalism,

multiethnicity ) expressed in Momaday & # 8217 ; s major plants and in the best modern-day literature

by Native American authors.

Momaday & # 8217 ; s background surely fostered multicultural positions. Navarro Scott

Mammedaty was born in 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, Kiowa state in southwesterly Oklahoma.

His autobiographical books, The Way to Rainy Mountain ( 1969 ) and The Name callings

( 1976 ) stress the importance of the Kiowa landscape and his male parent & # 8217 ; s tribal heritage.

But his female parent was one-eighth Cherokee and seven-eighths Euroamerican blends, and immature

Scott spent his childhood in several different Southwest communities ( Gallup, Shiprock,

Tuba City, Chinle, San Carlos, Hobbes ) where he was in close contact with Navajo and San

Carlos Apache, every bit good as Hispanic and Anglo kids. When Momaday was 12, his parents

took learning occupations at Jemez Pueblo. In his aggregation of prose verse forms and poesy In the

Presence of the Sun ( 1992 ) , Momaday recalls that his childhood experiences made him

autumn in love with Kiowa, Navajo, Jemez Pueblo, Spanish, and English words. After analyzing

at a Virginia military academy, Momaday attended the University of New Mexico ( B. A. in

political scientific discipline ) , the University of Virginia ( briefly to analyze jurisprudence ) , and Stanford ( M.A.

and Ph. D. in English ) , where he was strongly influenced by the poet and critic Ivor

Winters, who supervised his thesis, a critical edition of the poesy of Frederick

Goddard Tuckerman that was published by Oxford University Press in 1965. Momaday has won a

Guggenheim Fellowship and the Academy of American Poets Prize and has taught at Berkeley,

Stanford, and, most late, the University of Arizona. Emblematic of his varied

accomplishments and background are the two awards he received in 1969: a Pulitzer and

election into the Kiowa Gourd Clan.

Momaday & # 8217 ; s fiction and poesy make abundant usage of his multicultural background. House

Made of Dawn focuses on a returning Jemez Pueblo World War II veteran sent to prison

and so relocated after he kills an albino he perceives as a enchantress. Indian point of views are

non, nevertheless, limited to Jemez positions. In their ain ( sometimes self-serving,

sometimes selfless ) ways, an L.A. Kiowa sermonizer and Pan-Indian mescal adult male, a resettled

Navajo, a white rural husbandman & # 8217 ; s girl, and an urban physician & # 8217 ; s married woman all attempt to mend Abel

from their positions. In Momaday & # 8217 ; s 2nd novel, Ancient Child ( 1989 ) , the

supporter is Set ( Kiowa for bear ) , an adopted Kiowa-Anglo. He is a successful San

Francisco creative person traveling through a painful mid-life crisis. Set & # 8217 ; s primary therapist Grey

raisings him toward an apprehension of his Kiowa individuality and the exhilarating and

terrorizing brush with bear power that comes with that acknowledgment. ( Momaday expands on

his constructs of bear power in his aggregation of verse forms, prose, and picture, In the

Bear & # 8217 ; s House, 1999 ) . Grey is one of Momaday & # 8217 ; s finest multicultural creative activities. She is

largely Navajo and Kiowa but besides Mexican, Gallic Canadian, Scotch, Irish, and English.

Even The Way to Rainy Mountain & # 8212 ; Momaday & # 8217 ; s intricate aggregation of Kiowa tribal

and household narratives, Kiowa history, and personal memories of Kiowa landscapes and people & # 8211 ;

is a multicultural reading experience. It is his favourite book in portion because it grew out

of narratives Momaday had heard since childhood. The first published version was a in private

printed aggregation of Momaday & # 8217 ; s English versions of tribal and household narrations ( The

Journey of Tai-me, 1967 ) . With the encouragement of Yvor Winters, Journey

developed into a superb modernist experiment in appositions of private memories and

public unwritten and written literatures, including two of Momaday & # 8217 ; s best-known verse forms

“ Headwaters ” and “ Rainy Mountain Cemetery. ”

Momaday & # 8217 ; s of import aggregations of poesy include The Gourd Dancer ( 1976, which