SOURCE: An interview in Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets by Joseph Bruchac, Sun Tracks and the University of Arizona Press, 1987, pp. 1-21.

A member of the Abenaki tribe, Bruchac is an American short story writer, poet, editor, novelist, translator, and critic whose works are informed by his experiences as a Native American. In the following interview, originally conducted in 1983, Allen discusses Laguna society and culture, her upbringing, her influences, and thematic and stylistic aspects of her work.

[Bruchac]: In [your poem] "Recuerdo," there are images of movement, of loss, and of searching, images I see in many of your poems. What is it that is lost or looked for?

Allen on Thematic Aspects of Her Work:

I've been entirely preoccupied with colonization for probably all my writing life, and that would be twenty-five years. And metaphorically light and dark, shadows and sun, death and life...