Our Fire Survives the Storm

INDIGENOUS AMERICAS SERIES (UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 2007)

[1st edition description] This book examines many of the ways that Cherokees have understood and expressed identity and experience through writing in English. Drawing from this rich and ever-expanding canon, I examine three primary features of historical and contemporary Cherokee life–nationhood, removal, and regeneration–through literary expressions of cultural continuity. Our literature is the textual testament to our endurance; just as our oral traditions reflect the living realities and concerns of those who share them, so too do our literary traditions. This study is a focused exploration of a few key historical moments, texts, writers, and issues that illustrate the transformative and dynamic discourses of what it is to be Cherokee in various times and places. In short, it asks a simple question: how does a historically rooted and culturally informed reading of the Cherokee literary tradition help us to better understand Cherokee social history, and vice versa?

Cherokee history, politics, and cultural values form the interpretive lens for analyzing a wide range of materials created by Cherokees, from removal accounts in our oral traditions to newspaper articles, correspondence, treaties, laws and legal texts, historical monographs, plays, poems, and novels. This book is written for a wide audience, from Cherokee community members to academics to anyone interested in Native issues and literary studies.