SOURCE: A review of The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, in Parabola, Vol. XI, No. 4, November, 1986, pp. 102, 104.

An educator, editor, and critic, Jahner teaches English and Native American Studies. In the review below, she offers a thematic discussion of The Sacred Hoop, praising Allen's incorporation of personal experiences and beliefs.

Paula Gunn Allen is a leading American Indian poet, novelist, and essayist. The current collection, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, reprints the best of her earlier essays and adds several new ones. The twenty pieces that make up the new book represent attempts to measure her distance from any sensibility or historical paradigm imposed by cultural outsiders, and through that measuring to situate events and texts within alternative historical codes. In such a project, the writer's own position is basic. Her background is certainly not one that belongs to...