Criticism > Poetry > Erdrich, Louise - Robin Riley Fast (essay date 1999)

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Robin Riley Fast (essay date 1999)

SOURCE: Fast, Robin Riley. “Resistant History: Revising the Captivity Narrative in ‘Captivity’ and Blackrobe: Isaac Jogues.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23, no. 1 (1999): 69-86.

[In the following essay, Fast compares literary treatments of colonial Indian captivity stories, as represented in selected works of Erdrich and Maurice Kenny.]

Many contemporary American Indian writers are engaged in the shared project of complicating and revising the received history of the Americas. Kimberly Blaeser reminds us that survival is at stake here when she says that “the creation and interpretations of histories have … functioned directly as the justifications for possession or dispossession.” In “Captivity” and Blackrobe: Isaac Jogues respectively, Louise Erdrich and Maurice Kenny reread histories of captivity among the Indians recorded by the colonizers. Their...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Louise Erdrich and Jan George (interview date spring 1985)
   2. James McKenzie (review date spring 1985)
   3. Vernon Shetley (review date April 1985)
   4. Richard K. Waters (review date 1985)
   5. Michael Loudon (review date winter 1986)
   6. Elaine Jahner (review date 1986)
   7. Louise Erdrich and Miriam Berkley (interview date 15 August 1986)
   8. Louise Erdrich and Joseph Bruchac (interview date 1987)
   9. Helen Jaskoski (review date winter 1991)
   10. Carolyn Dunn (review date 1993)
   11. P. Jane Hafen (essay date summer 1996)
   12. Robin Riley Fast (essay date 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Louise Erdrich
2. How to Analyze a Poem
3. Poetry