Sherman J. Alexie, Jr. was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. Born hydrocephalic (water on the brain), Alexie underwent brain operation at the age of six. He survived the surgery,
Louise Erdrich is one of those multifaceted writers who can deftly maneuver the demands of poet, novelist and critic. Succeeding in both critically and popularly in each category, her work has established her at the forefront of the "Native American Renaissance". Accordingly, many have compared he
According to Jacques Derrida, structure -- the structure of language, for example -- occupies an impossible and ideal position: it at once posits an absolute center that holds everything together and a meta-perspective that also holds everything together. For Derrida, then, structure is defined by a
One of the most important Native American writers of the post-1968 generation, James Welch, to a large degree, established a genre. What he gave us was Native American Literature: literature unmistakably about Indian subjects, written by an Indian writer. His characters were never drawn from sensa