Griever (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gerald R. Vizenor
- First Published: 1987
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Neorealist fiction
- Subjects: Tricks, Interracial relationships, 1980’s, Native Americans or American Indians, Multiculturalism, Folklore, China or Chinese people, Bureaucracy or bureaucrats
- Locales: China, Beijing, China, Tianjin, China
In order to comprehend Griever: An American Monkey King in China, Western readers must consider Vizenor's statement that tragedy is a Western invention. Native American tales emphasize the comic with little overlapping toward the tragic. With this in mind, one can consider Griever de Hocus (as in Hokus-Pokus) the sort of trickster protagonist Vizenor set out to create.
Griever, a Native American teacher, himself a consummate trickster, finds himself teaching at Tianjin University in China, just as Vizenor, also a consummate trickster, did for a while in 1983. Griever...
[The entire page is 774 words long]
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