Fictional Writings by Global Indigenous Authors

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By Kate Rickwa

For my final project I decided to focus my research on fictional writings from indigenous authors around the world, with a goal of stretching these connections thousands of miles away from the setting of There There. I find fiction to be an incredible space for bridging historical truth and reality with personal experiences and perspectives as well as blurring the lines between reality and imagination, and it’s a particularly powerful tool for indigenous writers as they shed light on lives that have been and continue to be sidelined and silenced. One thing that both surprised and impressed me is the fact that all of the authors of the works I selected have professional experience in other fields besides writing. Tommy Orange has a bachelor’s degree in audio engineering and worked in youth suicide prevention and at health centers; Ignacio Manuel Altamirano served in the Mexican military and worked as a politician and judge in the Supreme Court; Sol Plaatje, who was fluent in multiple languages, translated Shakespeare into Tswana and worked as a politician and activist for liberation of the African people; Topas Tamapima was a medical doctor when he published “The Last Hunter” at the age of twenty-six; and Alexis Wright is a vocal land rights activist. It’s particularly interesting to note the authors’ personal lives, as it is clear in their pieces of fiction that their experiences have a significant impact and influence on what issues they choose to discuss or incorporate into their works.

While I did not intend to do this at the time of selecting my texts, I also found books spanning a variety of genres and noticed common threads in themes and concepts depending on the region. For example, indigenous-centered magical realism, which I will touch on, was particularly popular in Australia, and in modern times the genre is on the rise in the Americas as well, especially in novels and fiction aimed toward younger audiences. Ecorealist literature, which will be represented by Taiwan, also appeared quite often, especially when focusing on coastal and island regions of the globe. Such diversity in literature from Indigneous authors reflects the notion that while there are commonalities in the Indigenous experience, Native peoples do not all live the same lives, hold the same perspectives, or explore their experiences and ideas through the same creative means. Yet while the novels all explore a variety of global issues facing Indigenous communities, I also noticed many common themes and concepts explored in all of the texts I selected as well as similarities in the intentions and personal lives of the authors, particularly themes of alienation, displacement, redefining expectations and societal perceptions, adaptation and resilience, and community formation. 

Note: The timeline dates are centered around the approximate time period(s) each book is set.

Here is a list of additional texts that caught my eye, but I was unable to include:

  • The Man with the Compound Eyes / Wu Ming-yi

  • Nervous Conditions / Tsitsi Dangarembga (I’ve actually read this, highly recommend!)

  • Ceremony / Leslie Marmon Silko

Sources

Celarent, Barbara. Reviewed Work(s): Native Life in South Africa by Plaatje and Plaatje. American Journal of Sociology, 2014.

Chennells, Anthony. “Plotting South African History: Narrative in Sol Plaatje's ‘Mhudi.’ English in Africa, vol. 24, no. 1, 1997.

Chiu, Kuei-fen. The Production of Indigeneity: Contemporary Indigenous Literature in Taiwan and Trans-Cultural Inheritance. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Conway, Christopher. Ignacio Altamirano and the Contradictions of Autobiographical Indianism. Latin American Literary Review, 2006.

Du Preez, Jenny Bozena. Liminality and Alternative Femininity in Sol T. Plaatje’s Mhudi. Institute for Study English in Africa, 2017.

Faudree, Paja. What is an Indigenous Author?: Minority Authorship and the Politics of Voice in Mexico. The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research, 2015.

Hochbruck, Wolfgang. "I Have Spoken": Fictional "Orality" in Indigenous Fiction. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Holgate, Ben. Unsettling narratives: Re-evaluating magical realism as postcolonial discourse through Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and The Swan Book. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2015.

Huang, Hsinya. Indigenous Taiwan as location of native American and indigenous studies. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 4, 2014.

Masilela, Ntongela. Lover of His People: A Biography of Sol Plaatje. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, vol. 50, no. 2, 2013.

Reeds, Kenneth. Magical Realism: A Problem of Definition. Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, University College London, 2006.

Renes, Cornelis Martin. Kim Scott’s Fiction within Western Australian Life-Writing: Voicing the Violence of Removal and Displacement. Centre d’Estudis Australians, Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona, 2013.

Renes, Cornelis Martin. Sung by an Indigenous Siren: Epic and Epistemology in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria. Centre d’Estudis Australians, Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona, 2019.

Rudy, Jason R. Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century by Manu Samriti Chander, and: Romantic Literature and the Colonised World: Lessons from Indigenous Translations by Nikki Hessell, and: Colonial Literature and the Native Author: Indigeneity and Empire by Jane Stafford (review). Indiana University Press, 2019.

Segre, Erica. An Italicised Ethnicity: Memory and Resistance in the Literary Writings of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2000.

Shotton, Heather. Resisting the Violence through Writing: A Conversation with Tommy Orange. World Literature Today, 2019.

Sterk, Darryl. The Hunter's Gift in Ecorealist Indigenous Fiction from Taiwan. Oriental Institute (ASCR), Prague, 2013.

Sterk, Darryl. Ironic indigenous primitivism: Taiwan’s first ‘native feature’ in an era of ethnic tourism. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2014.

Taçon, Paul S.C. Connecting to the Ancestors: Why Rock Art is Important for Indigenous Australians and their Well-being. Rock Art Research, 2019.

Vincent, Eve, et all. Unstable relations: a critical appraisal of indigeneity and environmentalism in contemporary Australia. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2017.

Willan, Brian. Book Review: Sol Plaatje: A Life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876– 1932. Jacana, 2018

Wright-Rios, Edward. Indian Saints and Nation-States: Ignacio Manuel Altamirano’s Landscapes and Legends. University of California Press, 2004.