Bookshelf

UPCOMING

MUTING WHITE NOISE

MUTING WHITE NOISE: Native American and European American Novel Traditions. (James H. Cox, University of Oklahoma Press, 352 pp., cloth - $29.95)

In MUTING WHITE NOISE, James H. Cox considers how Native authors have liberated our imaginations from colonial narratives. Cox foregrounds the work of Native intellectuals in his readings of the American Indian novel tradition. He develops a perspective from which to look at the roles played by the Euro-American novel tradition in justifying and enabling colonialism.

By examining novels by Native authors, Cox shows how these writers challenge and revise colonizers' tales about Indians. He then offers "red readings" of some revered Euro-American novels, including Herman Melville's MOBY DICK and shows that until recently even those non-Native storytellers who sympathized with Indians could imagine only their vanishing by story's end.

This book breaks ground in literary criticism. It stands with Native authors in their struggle to reclaim their own narrative space and tell stories that empower and nurture rather than undermine and erase American Indians.

Cox holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and currently teaches Native American and American literature at the University of Texas in Austin. (November)

RECENT

THE MARRIAGE OF SAINTS: A Novel. (Dawn Karima Pettigrew, University of Oklahoma Press, 176 pp., hardcover - $19.95)

No matter how they tell it, wax and plaster saints have nothing on flesh and blood.

Just ask Sao Esperitu, a young woman with the clean eyes and the healing power. Sometimes a miracle looks like a bloody dog in the driveway needing to be healed. Other times it's a Native American ex-con on a Harley needing to be saved. Bo Notices has spent his life running from responsibility until he gets religion and a saint for a wife. But Sao and Bo's new stake in happiness doesn't come unchallenged.

Or ask any of the StandsStraight women, the daughters of Jack and Oklahoma: Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Tennessee Jane. Sainthood may be a matter of leading a traveling evangelical church. Or it may just be a matter of living through the sufferings of motherhood and sisterhood. Of lost children recovered, of others forever lost.

Victims and healers, saints and sinners, they all come together in these pages through interlinked tales of intertwined lives.

Dawn Karima Pettigrew is the author of the novel THE WAY WE MAKE SENSE, coauthor of CHILDREN LEARN WHAT THEY READ and the author of a spoken-word CD, THE WORSHIP OF ANGELS. She intertwines her Creek, Cherokee and other Native heritage into her work. (September)

THE WHISTLING TREE

THE WHISTLING TREE. (Audrey Penn with illustrations by Barbara Leonard Gibson, Tanglewood Press, 32 pp., picture book, hardcover - $16.95)

For months, Penny's dreams have been filled with melodious whistling, accompanied by twinkling lights. Then the whistling stops. When Penny goes searching for its source, she unexpectedly discovers her Cherokee roots and a special gift that has been handed down to her.

Lyrical and skillfully woven, Audrey Penn's tale recounts a child's delight in awakening to her heritage. Illustrated by Barbara Leonard Gibson, THE WHISTLING TREE reminds us all how deeply the past and the present are intertwined.

"This wonderful book chronicles a young girl's search for her Cherokee identity. Led by her dreams, she learns valuable lessons about her ancestral relationship to the natural world that sustains all of us. The imagery is powerful and instructive," writes Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. (September)

AMERICAN EXODUS

AMERICAN EXODUS: A Historical Novel about Indian Removal. (Le Triplett, iUniverse Inc., 448 pp., paperback - $23.95)

For hundreds of years, European-Americans took land from the Native Americans by duplicity, threats, broken treaties and force. A young man named John Ross - dignified, educated and one-eighth Cherokee - cultivates the favor of congressmen and stymies all land removal efforts from the presidencies of John Quincy Adams to James Madison.

At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, Cherokee allies save Andrew Jackson from certain defeat in the fight against Creek warriors. When Jackson is propelled to the presidency in 1828, pressure to expand territory for slavery results in Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830.

In 1838, U.S. troops force the Cherokee from their homes and into interment camps. In one of the worst winters on record, Ross leads the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Despite efforts, Ross cannot avoid his people from being drawn into the vortex of the Civil War. In AMERICAN EXODUS, Le Triplett tells Ross' story.

Triplett, of Cherokee descent, is a decorated World War II veteran. He has worked for 40 years in education and has degrees in history and political science.

- Travis Snell