Discussion Topics
Discuss Gerald Vizenor’s use of names in the works that you have read.
The stories that Vizenor writes are often set in either Minnesota or China. Does the author make significant connections in his writing between these two locales?
To what effect does Vizenor employ academic settings in the stories that you have read?
After reading some of Vizenor’s stories, how would you now define the term “trickster”?
Vizenor is very well read. Discuss some evidence in his stories that he consciously uses stories from past ages and literatures to illuminate some of his writing.
Vizenor has said in interviews that tragedy is an invention of the West. Despite this theory, do you find evidence in any of his writing of elements of tragedy?
What do you think Vizenor’s feelings are toward modern technology?
Other Literary Forms
Best known for his novels, especially Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1987), Gerald Vizenor has also published several volumes of poetry, many of them devoted to haiku. He also wrote the screenplay Harold of Orange (1983) and a number of nonfiction volumes, including Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (1994) and Postindian Conversations (1999), which champion the Native American cause.
Achievements
Winner of the Fiction Collective Award (1987), the American Book Award (1988), California Arts Council Literature Award (1989), and the PEN/Oakland Book Award (1990), Gerald Vizenor has become a prominent voice in Native American Literature despite the difficulty of his works. His academic recognition has included the J. Hill Professorship at the University of Minnesota and the David Burr Chair at the University of Oklahoma.
Gerald Vizenor
Author Profile
Gerald Vizenor’s success as a scholar and writer did not come easily or quickly. Before beginning his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota in 1962, Vizenor served in the National Guard and in the U.S. Army in Japan. In the early 1960’s, Vizenor worked as a corrections agent in Minnesota, while also writing poetry. In the late 1960’s, Vizenor worked as a journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune. Vizenor’s teaching career began in Minnesota public schools; he went on to teach literature and American Indian studies at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Vizenor’s writing, often in the form of satire, has tended to focus on issues concerning contemporary native identities, relationships between oral and written native histories and literatures, trickster figures, and the ways in which native people have been represented in literature, social science, and photography. Vizenor has published numerous volumes of poetry; his novels include Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1973) and Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1987). His many works of nonfiction include an edited volume of literary criticism, Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on American Indian Literatures (1989), and The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (1984).
Bibliography
Barry, Nora Baker. “Postmodern Bears in the Texts of Gerald Vizenor.” MELUS 27 (Fall, 2002): 93-112. Countering the trend to discuss Vizenor’s work by focusing on his trickster figures, Barry turns attention to his use of the mythologically important figure of the bear in his work.
Blaeser, Kimberly. Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Blaeser emphasizes Vizenor’s own awareness of ironic contrasts between his eclecticism and his sense of continuity with the tribal past.
Coltelli, Laura, ed. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Haseltine, Patricia. “The Voices of Gerald Vizenor: Survival Through Transformation.” American Indian Quarterly 9, no. 1 (Winter, 1985): 31. In discussing Vizenor’s multiplicity, Haseltine suggests that one strata of it arises...
(This entire section contains 742 words.)
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from dream vision experience.
Isernhagen, Hartwig. Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing. American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series 32. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Although Vizenor has given many interviews, this work brings him into the context of N. Scott Momaday’s works, which have been a major influence on Vizenor’s.
Lee, A. Robert, ed. Loosening the Streams: Interpretations of Gerald Vizenor. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2000. A collection of essays on a wide range of topics; includes a bibliography.
Monsma, Bradley John. “‘Active Readers … Obverse Tricksters’: Trickster-Texts and Cross- Cultural Reading.” Modern Language Studies 26 (Fall, 1996): 83-98. Monsma investigates to what extent Vizenor’s use of the trickster theme expects both the readers and the author to be tricksters.
Owens, Louis, ed. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 9 (Spring, 1997). This special issue devoted to Vizenor contains articles on his contrasts between tribal and legal identity, the way Samuel Beckett, John Bunyan, and he use the past in comparable ways, his employment of Buddhist and wasteland imagery, as well as his changing poetic vision.
Velie, Alan. Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Vizenor, Gerald. “An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Neal Bowers and Charles L. P. Silet. Melus 8, no. 1 (1981): 41-49. Vizenor relates the multiplicity, constant change, deliberate provocation, even contradiction in his own works to the traditional function of oral tales as a vivid dialogue between performer and audience, an activity he calls “word cinema.”
Vizenor, Gerald. “Mythic Rage and Laughter: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Dallas Miller. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 7 (Spring, 1995): 77-96. This interview explores the twin poles of anger and laughter in Vizenor’s writing.
Vizenor, Gerald. “On Thin Ice, You Might as Well Dance: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Larry McCaffery and Tom Marshall. Some Other Fluency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Vizenor considers that the precariousness of his situation has spurred his artistry.
Vizenor, Gerald. “‘I Defy Analysis’: A Conversation with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Rodney Simard, Lavonne Mason, and Ju Abner. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 5 (Fall, 1993): 42–51. Vizenor protests against critics’ attempts to classify him.
Bibliography
Barry, Nora Baker. “Postmodern Bears in the Texts of Gerald Vizenor.” MELUS 27 (Fall, 2002): 93-112. Countering the trend to discuss Vizenor’s work by focusing on his trickster figures, Barry turns attention to his use of the mythologically important figure of the bear in his work.
Blaeser, Kimberly. Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Blaeser emphasizes Vizenor’s own awareness of ironic contrasts between his eclecticism and his sense of continuity with the tribal past.
Coltelli, Laura, ed. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Haseltine, Patricia. “The Voices of Gerald Vizenor: Survival Through Transformation.” American Indian Quarterly 9, no. 1 (Winter, 1985): 31. In discussing Vizenor’s multiplicity, Haseltine suggests that one strata of it arises from dream vision experience.
Isernhagen, Hartwig. Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing. American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series 32. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Although Vizenor has given many interviews, this work brings him into the context of N. Scott Momaday’s works, which have been a major influence on Vizenor’s.
Lee, A. Robert, ed. Loosening the Streams: Interpretations of Gerald Vizenor. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2000. A collection of essays on a wide range of topics; includes a bibliography.
Monsma, Bradley John. “‘Active Readers Obverse Tricksters’: Trickster-Texts and Cross-Cultural Reading.” Modern Language Studies 26 (Fall, 1996): 83-98. Monsma investigates to what extent Vizenor’s use of the trickster theme expects both the readers and the author to be tricksters.
Owens, Louis, ed. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 9 (Spring, 1997). This special issue devoted to Vizenor contains articles on his contrasts between tribal and legal identity, the way Samuel Beckett, John Bunyan, and he use the past in comparable ways, his employment of Buddhist and wasteland imagery, as well as his changing poetic vision.
Velie, Alan. Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Vizenor, Gerald. “An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Neal Bowers and Charles L. P. Silet. Melus 8, no. 1 (1981): 41-49. Vizenor relates the multiplicity, constant change, deliberate provocation, even contradiction in his own works to the traditional function of oral tales as a vivid dialogue between performer and audience, an activity he calls “word cinema.”
Vizenor, Gerald. “Mythic Rage and Laughter: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Dallas Miller. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 7 (Spring, 1995): 77-96. This interview explores the twin poles of anger and laughter in Vizenor’s writing.
Vizenor, Gerald. “On Thin Ice, You Might as Well Dance: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Larry McCaffery and Tom Marshall. Some Other Fluency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Vizenor considers that the precariousness of his situation has spurred his artistry.
Vizenor, Gerald. “‘I Defy Analysis’: A Conversation with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Rodney Simard, Lavonne Mason, and Ju Abner. Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 5 (Fall, 1993): 42-51. Vizenor protests against critics’ attempts to classify him.
