Louise Erdrich, one of the most renowned Native American authors of our time, writes a female Bildungsroman in The Porcupine Year, a sequel to The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence. The story follows the 12-year-old Native American girl Omakayas as she makes the journey from childhood toward womanhood during the porcupine year, the year named for her younger brother's medicine animal. During this year that Omakayas travels with her family, looking for a new home after being forced off their land, she will fight with an eagle, endure betrayal and starvation and the death of her beloved friend Old Tallow. She will also fall in love, learn about healing from her grandmother Nokomis, and begin to realize her own gifts in this area. These experiences mark another stage in her coming of age.

Louise Erdrich is one of the most influential writers of the Native American Renaissance. Her contributions to the representation of Native American history have been great, and her masterpieces of children's literature have won her a prominent reputation. This article explores the (re)location of the concept of home in Erdrich's The Game of Silence and analyzes the novel's historical context with reference to various discourses on space/place, including those by Native Americans. Erdrich's narration reconstructs a space for Native American culture, religion and tradition, and for the continued survival of Native American people. She represents the silent history of her ancestors' displacement to the West, as white settlers encroached upon their beloved homeland. As Erdrich's work so poignantly illustrates, for Native American people, home is nowhere and anywhere.

Sherman Alexie is an acclaimed Native American author who writes about growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation and the harsh realities of widespread poverty and alcoholism. This paper aims to examine his reconstruction of Native American identity in his young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This book presents a Native American's education, culture, and wounds through the eyes of a teenage boy named Arnold. The phrase "absolutely true diary" hints at the semi-autobiographical nature of Alexie's novel; like Arnold, Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and transferred to the all-white high school in Reardon to escape the hopelessness of the rez. The words "part-time" signify Arnold's struggle to reconcile his disparate experiences in the white world and the Indian world. Caught between the two, he must reconstruct his Native American identity to find his own place in the world.