David Mogen
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853237365
- eISBN:
- 9781846312540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853237365.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on the unexpectedly well-suited combination of Native American prophecy and science fiction in novels by Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor. Books such as The Almanac of the ...
More
This chapter focuses on the unexpectedly well-suited combination of Native American prophecy and science fiction in novels by Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor. Books such as The Almanac of the Dead, Bearheart, and Dead Voices express apocalyptic landscapes that illustrate the destructive political, social, and ecological costs of Western ideas of progress; but Silko and Vizenor also present an alternate vision of time and history which utilizes Native beliefs and traditions. Thus, within the political protest, ironic inversions, and social satire of these works, there is a transformative element not uncommon in Native American writing – one that allows apocalypse to be understood as change, and even for the possibility of imagined tribal utopias.Less
This chapter focuses on the unexpectedly well-suited combination of Native American prophecy and science fiction in novels by Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor. Books such as The Almanac of the Dead, Bearheart, and Dead Voices express apocalyptic landscapes that illustrate the destructive political, social, and ecological costs of Western ideas of progress; but Silko and Vizenor also present an alternate vision of time and history which utilizes Native beliefs and traditions. Thus, within the political protest, ironic inversions, and social satire of these works, there is a transformative element not uncommon in Native American writing – one that allows apocalypse to be understood as change, and even for the possibility of imagined tribal utopias.
