Why right now, you ask? Well, for one thing, the pioneering Kiowa writer just turned eighty-five years old. For another, Words From a Bear—a documentary examining his life, writings, and enigmatic mind—just premiered at Sundance. Perhaps most importantly though, 2019 marks fifty years since House Made of Dawn, Momaday’s spellbinding debut novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The win made Momaday the first Native American recipient of a Pulitzer, in any category, in the then-fifty-two-year history of the award, and helped launch what became known as the “Native American Renaissance”—a nationwide emergence (as well as a rediscovery and wider recognition) of Native art and literature in a wide variety of forms. (Other writers typically associated with this movement include Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, Simon J. Ortiz, and Louise Erdrich, to list just a few.)
Momaday—a novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, and academic—has devoted his life to preserving the Native American oral and cultural traditions, in part by educating students and the wider public about sacred places and practices. He was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace and an Oklahoma poet laureate; given the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas; honored with the 2007 National Medal of Arts for “introducing millions worldwide to the essence of Native American culture”; and will, on May 1 of this year, receive the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize at a ceremony in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
As for House Made of Dawn itself, the book began as a series of poems and eventually morphed into a lyrical novel about a young man named Abel who returns to his New Mexico reservation after fighting in WWII and tries to reconnect with the values and traditions instilled in him by his grandfather, but finds himself emotionally severed from this previous life, caught between two different worlds. It’s an incredibly powerful, moving tale, which has been widely praised for its humane characterization, intricate construction, and evocative detailing of Indian life.
Below, to mark the anniversary, we take a look back at two reviews—one classic, one contemporary—of this iconic novel.
And the single deep voice of the
singers lay upon the dance, lay even upon the valley and the earth,
whole and inscrutable, everlasting. ... [mehr] https://bookmarks.reviews/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-first-novel-by-a-native-american-to-win-the-pulitzer-prize/
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