The broader social and political interpretation of trickster
figures, suggested by Womack, is supported by recognition of the important role
trickster modalities play in the work of many Native American artists, including
writers such as Gerald Vizenor, Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie as well as
painters such as Harry Fonseca, Delmore Boni, and T.C. Cannon. In literature, the Trickster discourse resonates with many
shape-shifting and boundary disolving
dimensions of the post-modern movement in mainstream culture. Thus, in both
painting and literature, contemporary artists use Trickster images to depict
the spirit of tradition and the spirit of change in a synchronicity that embraces
and yet also defies the trite icon of Coyote as Indian signifier.
Fig. 19
Fonseca
Visit virtual
exhibition: "Indian
Humor"
This is a humor that looks back and looks forward. Kenneth Lincoln understands Native American humor as arising
out of long traditions of suffering and injustice: "After five hundred years of dispossession -- germ and
conventional warfare, bounty hunting, guns, plows, telegraph poles, trains,
barbed wire enclosures, land swindles, and outright stealing -- native peoples
still persist on some 53 million acres of reservation land left over from the
great dirt grab. . .
. humor both targets and
takes some fatal sting out of history.
Looking to the future, Nancy Peterson argues that humor in Native American
literature "acts as a survival strategy and as a healing ceremony,"
and she sees in this development "the emergence of a new kind of Indi'n
humor rising out of triumphant laughter and (postmodern) trickster justice."
It
is important to note that American Indian literature now finds its audience
among Americans from all walks of life and whatever native survival strategies
may be found there, the writing transcends the confines of Indian Country.
Contemporary Native American novelists'
contributions toward a definition of American society is invaluable in that
they present a third world view from within. They have enriched American literary style by giving a new
and deeper dimension to the technique of interior monologue or stream of consciousness,
a new and deeper dimension to the techniques of time fusion through symbolic,
petroglyphic layering of character and action and of images of landscapes and
inscapes of the mind. .
. .
Richard Fleck (1989), p.3.
A
broad reading of Native American literature unveils a number of themes, besides
humor, that are commonly found among novelists like Erdrich, Silko, McNickle,
and Vizenor.
One of the most prominent themes
in Native American fiction is that of alienation and re-orientation (a la Homer
and Virgil); that is, an individual once removed from his tribal base by war,
the lure of the city, or other causes, must suffer extreme alienation as a third
worlder within so-called mainstream America. If he or she somehow survives this dislocation and alienation,
and if the protagonist desires reentry into his previous world, he must go through
the process of a gradual reaffirmation of tribal values. .
. . Another theme of interest is the play
between mythological realities and white man's Grand Central Station sense of
reality -- North American Magical Realism, if you will. .
. . For this reader, one of the most compelling
themes of Native American fiction is the sacredness of land. Richard Fleck (1989), p. 3-4.
Required Readings 8, 9 and 10: Blaeser, Vizenor
and Peterson.
Optional
Assignment: Choose a novel or short story from the
following list of writers. In a
three or four page essay, comment on the author's use of humor with regard to
what you have learned in the study guide.
Make specific reference to key passages in the fiction you have chosen.
Sherman
Alexie, Louise Erdrich, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Howard Norman, Simon
Ortiz, David Seals, Leslie Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and James Welch.
To
find specific works of these writers, see Reference
Finder. Enter surname
as Keyword.
Further Reading:
See
Reference
Finder. Keyword=humor-bib6. This
keyword will produce a bibliography for Native American Literature and Trickster
Discourse.