[In the following mixed review, Hafen notes the narrow literary scope of Allen's literary selections in Voice of the Turtle.]

Paula Gunn Allen's latest contribution to the body of Native American letters is this important anthology, Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1900-1970, first of a projected two-volume work. The second volume will contain contemporary writings. This well-organized and thematically selected collection offers both familiar and lesser-known narrative selections placed in a tribal, historical, and literary context.

Allen (Laguna Pueblo/Sioux) is currently a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a scholar in Native American studies, an editor, and an author of her own poetry and fiction. Her other successful editorial contributions are Studies in American Indian Literature (Modern Language Association, 1983), a guide to criticism and course designs, and Spider Woman's Granddaughters (Beacon Press, 1989), an anthology of Native American women's writings.

Allen identifies the 1900-70 time frame of her selections in Voice of the Turtle as the “formative period of Native fiction” that includes both reliance on traditional and oral narratives and development of an independent native narrative tradition. “Native narrative tradition” is a theme Allen uses repeatedly throughout her comments. She characterizes this tradition as representing a communal voice, depicting an “all-encompassing” wholeness, and having a content that “revolves around the theme of magical transformation, but within that rubric it employs a number of subthemes, of which the major ones are social change, cultural transition, and shifting modes of identity” (p. 8). Her editorial challenge, therefore, is to make these comprehensive observations under the general matrix of “American Indian” or “Native American” literature and apply her overall conclusions to specific tribal literatures. She accomplishes this task with a detailed introduction, contextual-specific introductions to individual selections, and biographical information about each author at the end of the book.

Predictably, Allen includes authors familiar to readers of American Indian literature: Charles A. Eastman, Arthur C. Parker, Mourning Dove, Luther Standing Bear, John Oskison, Black Elk, Zitkala Sa, John Joseph Mathews, N. Scott Momaday, and Simon J. Ortiz. These authors are frequently anthologized, and their unabridged works are basic texts in Native American studies. Allen argues that her excerpts from longer, familiar works should be viewed as components within an interconnected wholeness that acts as the metaphor for native life (p.xi). Her particular selections establish those connections within her theme of “native narrative tradition.” Choices from the works of these authors therefore represent some selections that are less frequently anthologized. For example, Zitkala Sa's reminiscences of her schoolgirl days are published in various anthologies. However, her short fictions, such as “The Widespread Enigma Concerning Blue-Star Woman” (1921) from this volume, are less prominent. Likewise, selections from Momaday's House Made of Dawn often appear in anthologies. Allen's choice of the literary depiction of the Santiago Feast Day at Walatowa is a piece that not only presents her theme but benefits from her interpretive introduction, where she establishes the history of the occasion, defines peculiarities of Pueblo material culture, and discusses Momaday's narrative techniques.

A representative work of native narrative tradition, according to Allen, is the excerpt from Don C. Talayesva's “School Off the Reservation” (1942). Talayesva's recounting of his spiritual journey portrays his “inner cabin” of traditional Hopi beliefs while demonstrating transitions between that Hopi world and modern, mainstream educational systems. As Allen notes, this selection enlightens the spiritual “subtext” of the other works in the anthology by representing a mode of experience free from “Western contextualization” (p. 240). Unlike Black Elk's vision (also included in this volume), which is filtered through John Neihardt's shaping, Ben Black Elk's translation, and Enid Neihardt's transcription, Talayesva's story presents its own unique cosmology; it offers a view of the world that is distinctively Hopi. The “supernatural” aspect of this story is axiomatic to individual tribes and their particular avatars. Allen elucidates these spiritual elements by explaining katsinas and other Hopi figures, yet she maintains a reverence for sacred sovereignty.

Allen's introductory remarks to her literary selections follow a pattern of establishing a general theme, then connecting that theme to specific tribal culture. For example, in her introduction to “Coyote Juggles His Eyes” (1933) by Mourning Dove, Allen comments about trickster coyote stories. She then moves from the general to the specific by identifying Coyote's participation in the creation cycle of Mourning Dove's Colville-Okanogan tribe. This pattern allows Allen the flexibility to place a particular story in a larger cultural context while recognizing and maintaining the tribal individuality of the specific author.

Some of Allen's selections appear in other anthologies: Simon Ortiz's “Woman Singing” appears in Geary Hobson's collection The Remembered Earth, and John M. Oskison's “The Problem of Old Harjo” appears in both the Heath and the Norton anthologies of American literature. However, D'Arcy McNickle, E. Pauline Johnson, Estelle Armstrong, Pretty Shield (with Frank B. Linderman), Don C. Talayesva, Ronald Rogers, and Grey Cohoe are less available in anthology form. Although McNickle, Talayesva, and Pretty Shield's works are accessible in their complete format, the other authors most likely are read in anthologies. The obvious omission from this distinguished list of authors is Ella Deloria. Not only does her work fit Voice of the Turtle's theme and period, but an excerpt from her novel Waterlily appears in Allen's other anthology Spider Woman's Granddaughters.

Additionally, the absence of poetry, particularly the works of Ortiz and Momaday, is startling. Although Allen effectively explains the fluidity between oral traditional narrative and contemporary fiction as a confluence of “events, symbols, and imagery” of native life, she does not address poetry or its absence. When compared to Hobson's 1979 anthology, which includes works of the same general period along with more genres and varied selections, Voice of the Turtle may appear narrow in scope. Also, Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology, edited by Gerald Vizenor (HarperCollins College Division, 1995), has more selections and genres, including previously inaccessible Native American drama. Both Vizenor and Hobson, however, present single-volume anthologies with greater emphasis on contemporary literature, as will the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Native American Literature.

Allen's specific time focus and thematic approach, along with her commentary on and her awareness of tribal sovereignty, offer students and readers a distinctive literary range and option. With the plethora of Native American contemporary fiction anthologies, Voice of the Turtle is a substantial alternative for detailed study of American Indian literature from the early part of this century through 1970. One hopes Allen's second volume will sustain thoughtful commentary and astute choices of representative literary works.