In a Native American Voice with Paula Gunn Allen

Program Description

An award-winning author and poet dedicated to gathering and disseminating authentic Native American literature speaks out on a great variety of topics that reveal many facets of her own background and worldview. We hear of the Laguna Pueblo land in New Mexico where she was raised, and the special quality of places where habitation by humans “and supernaturals” has been stable and continuous for centuries. She shares some of her favorite aspects of contemporary Native American literature, and her hope for a renewal of American culture of all kinds. “It is the end of the world, from some people’s point of view,” says Allen, “but it’s the renewal of something more ancient and more true.”

She is a professor of English at UCLA, and the author of several books including Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Native American Women’s Traditional Short Stories (Ballantine 1990), The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Tradition (Beacon Press 1992) and Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1900-1970 (Ballantine 1994).

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• The diverse effects of human presence on the land
• The important difference between cities and villages
• The approaching “springtime” in American culture
• Connections between Asian and Native American cultures
• The strength of human presence in oral storytelling
• Scott Momaday and the perspective shift in Native American storytelling
• The Navajo story of the phantom hitchhiker
• The problem with images of Indians in mainstream culture

Program Number: 2472         Host: Michael Toms                Interview Date: 7/8/1994