SOURCE: Paula Gunn Allen, Boise State University, 1990, 50 p.

In the excerpt below, Hanson provides an overview of Allen's literary career through 1983.

At the center of Paula Gunn Allen's vision of self and art is an individual alienated within. For Allen the idea of the "breed" reflects a preoccupation with alienation as a personal and as an aesthetic experience. Allen's biography, her understanding of Native American literature, and her works of art and criticism are informed by the consciousness that "breeds" are aliens to traditional Native Americans and yet also aliens among whites. To know Allen's life and work is to reflect deeply on the meaning of "breed" in Native American experience. Also, to know her life and work is to gain peculiar insight into the transformative art concealed within the alien's exceptionally acute visionary power. To stand outside, to be and yet not to be, becomes, at least...