The West Pole Diane Glancy		$18.95 Cloth/jacket ISBN: 0-8166-2894-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2894-0
A series of interlinked considerations of the connection between storymaking and identity. In this groundbreaking work of creative nonfiction, American Book Award winner Diane Glancy juxtaposes personal essays, Cherokee myths, and imaginative sketches to explore her experiences as a Native American mixed-blood coming to terms with the fragmentary nature of her life. The West Pole is a book about storymaking; in it, Glancy explores the ways the structure of Native American storytelling reflects and shapes her own sense of identity. Through words, she creates and re-creates herself, her world, the traditions of the Cherokee people from whom she is descended. What is the West Pole? Something not there unless you believe it is—destinations taken on faith. "The country growing older. The century. Myself. The browning of America. Multiculturalism. . . . The instability of the economy. The End of the Trail. All of it." These are among the places she takes us by way of "storying," the Cherokee way of recording their struggle across the moving landscape of their lives. Glancy herself has moved, circling back on her history, the history of the Cherokee people, and our history as a storied nation. Genealogy, school, Native American novels, Minnesota Public Radio, television, exercise bikes, Christmas gifts, autumn leaves, snow, a painting by Pissarro, a flight to Chicago, movies and photo albums: These are some of the occasions and objects that trigger Glancy's meditations, that become milestones on her journey. "The book is discursive, in the best sense of that word; by wandering, Glancy takes us around and shows us some of what is important to her." —MultiCultural Review Among Diane Glancy's many published works are two novels, Pushing the Bear (1996) and The Only Piece of Furniture in the House (1996), three volumes of short stories, six books of poetry, and a play. Her previous collection of essays, Claiming Breath (1992), won an American Book Award and the 1991 Native American Prose Award. She teaches Native American literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. 216 pages | 1997 Table of Contents Diffusionism Now Hides Who Can Speak as Indian? Genealogy School Sometimes I Lose it Parts of Three Lectures Comment Culture and Environment: Voices in the Wind Their Eyes Have Seen the Buffalo Washing out the War-Clothes Now Late in the Afternoon The Chart of Elements The Germany Trip The Woman Who Became a Bear This Is for You There's a Word for It Because It Happens or Maybe It Happens because There's a Word for It Writing, Language, and Stories Comment Speaking the Corn into Being The Woman Who Made Eyes The Story A Short Story is Something Happening The Stories Grandmother Library Reconstructing Now Snow Short Flight from Minneapolis to Chicago Louvecinnes, Camile Pissarro, Art Institute of Chicago Comanche, Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, Lawrence Minnesota Public Radio The West Pole The Horse A Christmas Memory The Drinking Vessel / A Christmas Gift You're Responsible for Your Own Leaves Television Is the West Pole History Comment A Short, Historical Perspective of the Native American in a Nonhistorical Book Columbus Meets Thelma and Louise and the Ocean Is Still Bigger than Any of Us Thought Hollyhock (A Personal of My Own Life History) An Infrequent Journey Photo Album Sugar Woman Now War Horse I War Horse II War Horse III Three Reviews Comment Review of Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko Winter Recount: A review of Shadow Catcher by Charles Fergus Emergent Literatures That Challenge the Standard; or, Mammy Yokum hollerin bout sumthun Now Hereafter Seated Bird Man, Leonard Boskin, Minneapolis Institute of Arts The New War Horse Is the Exercise Bike He Has More Than One Ear If Not All These