R105 | Indigenous Literature of the Northeast | Thursday - 1:30 - 3:00 p.m. In-person at BCC |
We will consider Indigenous literature of the Northeast through a sampling of fiction, poetry, essays, and historical accounts, with a focus on the roles of storytelling, community, and the land. We’ll ask ourselves what each author has to say about the ways some Indigenous people make sense of themselves as part of their own communities and as part of the larger story of North America. We begin in pre-contact New York with Joseph Bruchac’s novel, Dawn Land, move ahead in time and further east to Central Massachusetts with Cheryl Savageau’s poetry collection, Mother/Land, and end in Maine’s Penobscot Reservation with Fire Exit, a contemporary novel, by Morgan Talty. We will also read short excerpts from the collection, Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, ed. Siobhan Senier. For a more general introduction to Native American history, please consult Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
Suggested Reading:
Pat Kennedy has a BA from Brandeis University and an MA in English from Tufts University. She taught English for 32 years at Holyoke Community College, often teaching Native American Literature as part of a team-taught integrative course with Native American history. |
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