Knowing Native Arts by Nancy Marie Mithlo (review)

Abstract

Laguna land, Archuleta employs race and space to conjecture Silko’s sense of land as multispaced and transnational— a fact due partially to the unlandedness of Native peoples in the Americas. In her essay “‘The Web of Stories’: Reading and Change in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller,” Linda Krumholtz considers Silko’s text in conversation with poststructuralism. Intriguingly, Krumholtz points out the congruences between the Derridean notion that language is world and Silko’s assertion that narrative and stories make up reality. David Stirrup’s “‘This Story Is Found’: Silko’s Storyteller and the Roots of Native American Literature” takes a materialist perspective. From the peritext of Storyteller’s original jacket copy that likened it to Alex Haley’s Roots, Stirrup embarks on a nuanced and useful analysis of Storyteller’s context in publishing and literary culture, noting the universalizing dangers of multicultural rhetoric. Finally, Ami Regier’s “Storyteller in an Undergraduate Theory Course” is a pedagogical essay recounting Regier’s experience teaching four critical methodologies through Silko’s text— undoubtedly beneficial for instructors interested in bringing Silko into the classroom. Rainwater has edited a wideranging collection. The application of new critical paradigms to an underconsidered Silko text not only offers persuasive new readings but also gestures toward directions for further scholarship.