[American Indian Fiction] is the first book-length study of fiction written by American Indians. Larson treats novels by twelve authors: Simon Pokagon, John M. Okison, John J. Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Dallas Chief Eagle, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Denton Bedford, George Pierre, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Nasnaga. Though the book is titled American Indian Fiction, Larson discusses only novels, ignoring the fine short fiction of Simon Ortiz, Leslie Silko, and others for plodding discussions of the third-rate novels of Nasnaga, Pierre, Bedford, and Eagle. Larson gives some interesting readings of individual novels, but the study is marred by a curious and often imprecise conceptual frame.
This is nowhere more evident than in the introductory chapter in which the limits of the study are defined. The single criterion for inclusion of an author is whether he is "genuinely a Native American." This of course is a question which has plagued administrators, scholars, and Indian people themselves for well over a century, and it is one that has never been answered satisfactorily. Larson does no better. He looks first to tribal rolls which imply "a kind of kinship with fellow tribesmen"; then to biography and documentary information about the authors "that attests to their general acceptance by their own people"; and finally settles on the author's "Indianness" as the final criterion. Nowhere is Larson able to tell us what "Indianness" is. On the one hand, his discussions suggest that the quality is somehow related to the way in which the author and his work are received by Indian communities. Thus Pokagon possesses "Indianness" because he was a Pottawatomie "chief," Mathews because he served on the Osage Tribal Council, and others because their work has been included in anthologies edited by American Indians. On the other, we are given the impression that "Indianness" is a quality the aware reader can intuit: "Seven Arrows in many ways seems to be more 'Indian' than any of the others." Throughout, the working definition seems to be that a person is an Indian if he chooses to be identified as an Indian, though that is nowhere made explicit.
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