good short stories to write cultural anaylisis on

This is admittedly a moral view of the question, but literature is itself a moral view, and it is a view of morality” (105). Scott Momaday (Kiowa) also suggests that humans achieve their “fullest realization” of their “humanity in such an art and product of the imagination as literature-and here I use the term literature in its broadest sense. Bruchac told this audience that their ability to write was given by the creator, and, therefore, writers have an “obligation to return that gift, to make use of it in a way that serves the people and the generations to come” (xix).

More than 200 published authors participated. In 1991 Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) helped organize a festival of Native writers from North America. Trafzer (Wyndot) designates pieces of short fiction “paper spirits.” Such designations focus on discourse as a “saying” (continuing conversations or dialogues) rather than a “said” (something finished and therefore preempted). For example, Gerald Robert Vizenor (Chippewa) calls printed texts “dead voice,” Greg Lesley names them “talking leaves,” and Clifford E. Individual authors try, through print, to extend such intimacy to unknown readers. In communal settings, storytellers are often intimate friends of the listeners. Both traditional storytellers and creative writers use language to maintain, transform, or heal their environment-an environment created to sustain all lifeforms in harmonious cooperation. In fact, myths, rituals, legends, trickster stories, and folklore formulate the worldview against which Native American writers often measure their characters’ experiences. Despite the vast range of cultural differences existing among the 310 Native American tribes in the United States, writers from these varied communities acknowledge the relationship between orally transmitted narratives and single-authored works of short fiction. Most Native American authors believe these assertions about the power of narrative.

Sacred narratives are simply those stories about ancestors who have provided significant and respected examples of how best to live in a complex world full of wonder. By telling a story, we give meaning to experience. Without stories we cannot share our experiences with others or describe our sometimes intimate relationship with the earth, our kindred, or the power of creation. Without stories we cannot remember the past, understand the present, or look forward to a future. Storytelling is as essential to human survival as food and water.

Good short stories to write cultural anaylisis on