SOURCE: A review of "On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, A Pequot," in The Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 13, No. 3, May-June, 1993, p. 3.

In the following review, Bankston discusses major themes in Apess's writing and assesses his effectiveness as a critic of American policy toward native peoples.

In For Those Who Come After, a study of Native American autobiography, Arnold Krupat remarks that the Indian autobiography is not a traditional form of narration. It is an art whose performance entails crossing boundaries of mentality as well as those of craft. Indigenous autobiographers use a language that is not simply foreign but is inimical to their experience as members of a conquered ethnic group. They occupy the most uncomfortable of cross-cultural positions: that of the invaded who inhabit the consciousness of the invader. Irony, the quality of possessing a double meaning, permeates their attempts to twist the accustomed...