Common Reading 2020-21: Listen. Learn. Act.

Covers Native American literature in both oral and written forms with general articles and articles on individual authors including Black Elk, Vine Deloria, Jr., Zitkal Sa, N. Scott Momaday, Wendy Rose, Ray Young Bear, and many others. Includes bibliographical references and index.

American Indians have produced some of the most powerful and lyrical literature ever written in North America. "Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature" covers the field from the earliest recorded works to some of today's most exciting writers. This encyclopedia features the most respected, widely read, and influential American Indian writers to date.

The earliest Native American writers wrote tribal histories or autobiographical accounts. Today, Native American writing is steeped in the oral traditions of many peoples and reflects a facility with language that is equally at home in prose or poetry. "Native American Literatures" is a sourcebook that can enhance any reader's appreciation of both the writers and their works. Cross referencing allows readers to move easily among the listings, guiding them to other examples of an author's works and from character to character within a given novel.

Invisible, marginal, expected - these words trace the path of recognition for American Indian literature written in English since the late eighteenth century. This Companion chronicles and celebrates that trajectory by defining relevant institutional, historical, cultural, and gender contexts, by outlining the variety of genres written since the 1770s, and also by focusing on significant authors who established a place for Native literature in literary canons in the 1970s (Momaday, Silko, Welch, Ortiz, Vizenor), achieved international recognition in the 1980s (Erdrich), and performance-celebrity status in the 1990s (Harjo and Alexie).

Advances critical conversations in Native American literary studies by situating its subject in global, transnational, and modernizing contexts.