A listening wind : native literature from the Southeast / edited and with an introduction by Marcia Haag.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A Listening Wind , a collection of translated original texts and commentary edited by Marcia Haag, highlights the large array of Indigenous linguistic and cultural groups of the U.S. Southeast. A whole range of genres and selected texts represent language groups of the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Cherokee, Koasati, Houma, Catawba, and Atakapa.



The traditional and modern Native literature genres showcased in A Listening Wind include stories that speakers perceive to be in the past (or "fixed"), genres that have developed alongside these stories, and modern story types that have sometimes supplanted traditional tales and are now enjoying trajectories of their own. These texts have been selected to demonstrate particular literary themes and the cultural perspectives that inform them. Introductory essays illuminate how they fit into Native American religious and philosophical systems. Overall this collection discloses the sometimes hidden connections among genres as well as their importance to language groups of the Southeast.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This exciting addition to the "Native Literatures of the Americas Series" includes stories from the Choctaw, Muskogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Yuchi, Cherokee, Koasati, Atakapa-Ishak, Catawba, and Houma tribal storytelling traditions. The stories are drawn from oral and written traditions and represent a variety of genres. Although certainly entertaining and worth reading on their own merits, the stories themselves--some contemporary and some traditional--are but one of the merits of this collection. The introductory and explanatory essays provide interesting and important contextual information about the tribal populations, their histories, and their languages. Given this, the collection will be of interest to students of literature, linguistics, history, and anthropology as well as an important resource for Native studies scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --James J. Donahue, SUNY Potsdam