SOURCE: Keating, AnaLouise. “Back to the Mother?: Paula Gunn Allen's Origin Myths.” In Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde, pp. 93-117. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Keating analyzes Allen's distinctive use of North American origin myths and the metaphoric representations of the woman in her work.

There is no arcane place for return.

Trinh Minh-ha

The meanings of the past create the significance of the present.

Paula Gunn Allen

Thus, “the feminine” wouldn't be the myths, etc. made by men; it would be that which “I, woman” invent, enact, and empower in “our” speech, our practice, our collective quest for a redefinition of the status of all women.

Rosi Braidotti

The “origin” of the tradition must be acknowledged, but acknowledgment does not sanction simple repetition: each new performer “signifies” upon that origin by transforming it, and...