Kliatt, May 2000
GLANCY, Diane & NOWAK, Mark, eds. Visit Teepee Town; Native writings after the detours.
Coffee House Press. 372p. 23cm. 98-52208. c1999. 1-56689-0845. $17.95.
In her preface, Glancy speaks of "those voices built on an absence of place and identity." She is referring to the scattering of tribes and dilution of their culture that led to a "rumbling silence." And out of that silence came new voices of survivors, the ones who rediscovered their origins through language and song. According to Glancy this collection takes a more "relationist stance," compared to previous anthologies solely devoted to Native American writers. She includes pieces by a Chicano writer on his meetings with the Mayan Indians, translations of Yaqui Coyote songs and a piece on language inspired by the Narragansett tribe. Although most writings are poems, there are some essays, trickster tales, prose poems and chants. She pays tribute to the strong oral tradition (where most of these pieces have their origins) and encourages the reader to hear the voice behind the printed words.
Included are better known writers like Linda Hogan and Glancy herself, and ones lesser known like Marie Annharte Baker. Hogan's piece, "Elk Song," describes the thoughtless slaughter of animals for sport and how this act leads to a kind of death for humans as well: "...behind the dark trunks of trees/ the gone elk have pulled the hide of earth/ tight and they are drumming/ back the woodland..."
Some pieces require our loosening of concepts about what is "right language," especially in translated pieces. Larry Evers and Felipe Molina's "Sontao Ya'uchin" is taken from the Yaqui song tradition. These are coyote songs performed to evoke the spirits who protect their tribe. The singer accompanies himself on drums. The song appears on facing pages, in the Yaqui language and in English, in stanzas that indent with each line, resembling stairs or maybe the receding shelves of cliffs. The Yaqui version should be read aloud to feel the full impact of the song.
This collection is rich in its diversity: stories of tricksters, chants, visions of retribution and reclamation. Because of Glancy's careful and respectful selection and her passion for authenticity, the pieces together proclaim an identity, once lost, now slowly finding itself by going back. Sue E. Budin, YA Libn., Ann Arbor PL., Ann Arbor, MI