Native American Realism

Abstract

This chapter argues that American Indian realist writings provide glimpses into cultures essentially unknown to mainstream readers of literary realism by writers outside the mainstream realist canon. It thus takes as one of its points of departure arguments for canon expansion. It also argues for widening the parameters of realism to include genres other than the novel, because so many of the writers during this era are mixed-genre writers. Basing its argument on a variety of genres, then, the chapter places several American Indian writers and their writings in social-historical contexts, such as resistance to mainstream culture, compulsory boarding school, allotment of Indian lands, coerced assimilation, and the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee.