SOURCE: "Above All, Keep the Tale Going," in The New York Times Book Review, May 14, 1989, p. 15.

Le Guin is an American novelist, short story writer, nonfiction writer, critic, editor, poet, playwright, and author of children's books. In the following, she discusses the arrangement and focus of the stories collected in Spider Woman's Granddaughters.

Louise Erdrich has become a best seller, and Leslie Marmon Silko, Linda Hogan and other Native American women rank high among modern writers. First with her critical essays in The Sacred Hoop, and now with this fine collection of stories [entitled Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women], Paula Gunn Allen gives us a much needed context for their work. In her introduction and in notes to the stories, Ms. Allen, a professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses who these writers are, why they...