James Ruppert

John Purdy

AN ANTHOLOGY THAT features both classic and contemporary Native American Literatures, Nothing But The Truth is a healthy collection of the best works of Native American Literature. The pieces of literature selected for this anthology are core texts used in classrooms and are conductive to discussion in the classroom. Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama are included as well as some theoretical discussion and introductions by various scholars and teachers of the literature.

An Anthology of Native American Literature

Nothing But the Truth

John W. Bernet

Storytelling is a precious, vibrant tradition among the Native peoples of the Far North. Collected here for the first time are stories from the communities of interior Alaska and the Yukon Territory. These are the tales the people tell about themselves, their communities, and the world they inhabit. øOur Voices showcases twenty storytellers and writers who represent a full range of Athabaskan and related languages of Alaska and the Yukon. Both men and women recount popular tales of ancient times that describe the origins of social institutions and cultural values, as well as meaningful, sometimes intimate stories about their own lives and families or the history of their people. As representatives of an art transmitted through countless generations and now practiced with renewed interest and vigor by people reclaiming their cultural heritage, these narratives create a broad, brightly colored, richly detailed picture of the world of the Far North, present and past.

Native Stories of Alaska and the Yukon

Our Voices

Mediation is the term James Ruppert uses to describe his important new theory of reading Native American fiction. Focusing on novels of six major contemporary American writers - N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Silko, Gerald Vizenor, D'Arcy McNickle, and Louise Erdrich - Ruppert analyzes the ways in which these writers draw upon their bicultural heritage, guiding Native and non-Native readers alike to a different and expanded understanding of each other's worlds. While Native American writers may criticize white society, revealing its past and present injustices, their emphasis, Ruppert argues, is on healing, survival, and continuance. Their fiction aims to produce cross-cultural understanding rather than divisiveness. To that end they articulate the perspectives and values of competing world views. In particular they create characters who manifest what Ruppert calls "multiple identities" - determined by both Native and non-Native perceptions of the self. These writers use a variety of narrative techniques deriving from different cultural traditions. They might incorporate Native oral storytelling techniques, adapting them to written form, or they might reconstruct Native mythologies, investing them with new meaning and relevance by applying them to contemporary situations. As novel-writers, they also include features more characteristic of western European writing - such as the omniscient narrator or the detective-story plot.

Mediation in Contemporary Native American Fiction

Storytelling is an important, vibrant tradition among the Native peoples of the Far North, especially in the Athabaskan communities of interior Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Here for the first time is an anthology of the best stories that Athabaskan speakers tell about themselves, their communities, and the cold, beautiful world of the Far North. Showcased are twenty accomplished Native storytellers, recognized as masters by their people, who come from the Deg Hit'an, Koyukon, Gwich'in, Northern and Southern Tutchone, Kaska, Tagish, Upper and Lower Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Kuskokwim, Dena'ina, Ahtna, and Eyak communities. Men and women, young and old, recount popular tales of legendary times, such as how Raven Shaped the World. They also share meaningful, sometimes intimate, stories about their own lives, their families, or the history of their people. These evocative, wonderfully crafted stories are a literary treasure trove; entertaining, enchanting, and offering an unforgettable glimpse of the Native peoples who live under the bright lights of the Far North.

Marie-Laure Ryan

Narratology has been conceived from its earliest days as a project that transcends disciplines and media. The essays gathered here address the question of how narrative migrates, mutates, and creates meaning as it is expressed across various media.ø Dividing the inquiry into five areas: face-to-face narrative, still pictures, moving pictures, music, and digital media, Narrative across Media investigates how the intrinsic properties of the supporting medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience. Unlike other interdisciplinary approaches to narrative studies, all of which have tended to concentrate on narrative across language-supported fields, this unique collection provides a much-needed analysis of how narrative operates when expressed through visual, gestural, electronic, and musical means. In doing so, the collection redefines the act of storytelling. Although the fields of media and narrative studies have been invigorated by a variety of theoretical approaches, this volume seeks to avoid a dominant theoretical bias by providing instead a collection of concrete studies that inspire a direct look at texts rather than relying on a particular theory of interpretation. A contribution to both narrative and media studies, Narrative across Media is the first attempt to bridge the two disciplines.

James Ruppert

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