Hispanic Literature

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Step 1: Please consult the following article from a faculty member's point of view on Native American Written Literature. I'm sure that after you will have carefully browsed through this article, you will be able to come up with more.

http://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/native_american_literature.htm
(The TA feels that this article summarizes the particular question the student posted; but the student needs to read it in order to work through a Vann diagram to find out the correct answer.) To quote from the following literary scholar who specialized in Native American literature, you can start with, "According to the literary scholar,.................(insert the faculty member's name) from.........," (you should look up what the names stand for by visiting the website attached for your convenience).

Native American Literature--selected bibliography, compiled by K.L. MacKay

***A Brief History of Native American Written Literature
The first native American literary texts were offered orally, and they link the earth-surface people with the plants and animals, the rivers and rocks, and all things believed significant in the life of America's first people. The texts tie Indian people to the earth and its life through a spiritual kinship with the living and dead relatives of Native Americans. Coyote, raven, fox, hawk, turtle, rabbit and other animal characters in the stories are considered by many Native Americans to be their relatives. In the same way, the Plant People are related to Indian people. Oak, maple, pine, cedar, fir, corn, squash, berries and roots are viewed as relatives. The Animal People and Plant People participated in a history before and after the arrival of humans, and this history was kept through the spoken word. There was a similar relationship with the geographical features of the earth.

Telling a story and writing a story, even if they are the same story, remembered from generation to generation, are not the same way of preserving the story. The teller and the writer use different faculties of mind, and have different habits and disciplines of language, memory, tradition. Each has a different responsibility to the story, and to the listener or the page. The teller's relationship to the story and the listener, both at once, is direct. The writer wrestles with the page, with the story, in solitude.

The history of literature written in English by American Indians parallels the history of white migration across the continent. White exploration and settlement were followed by the arrival of missionaries who converted Indians to Christianity and educated them in religious schools.

The first Native American writer to be published in English was Samson Occom (Mohegan, 1723-92). Although raised as a typical Mohegan boy, at 16 he began to study English, was converted to Christianity, became a schoolmaster to Indians and then served as a missionary among New England Indians. His 1771 A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian went through 19 editions.

The genre in which most Native American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries have written is autobiography. This choice represents a ...