The Red Land to the South

The forty years of American Indian literature taken up by James H. Cox—the decades between 1920 and 1960—have been called politically and intellectually moribund. On the contrary, Cox identifies a group of American Indian writers who share an interest in the revolutionary potential of the indigenous peoples of Mexico—and whose work demonstrates a surprisingly assertive literary politics in the era.

By contextualizing this group of American Indian authors in the work of their contemporaries, Cox reveals how the literary history of this period is far more rich and nuanced than is generally acknowledged. The writers he focuses on—Todd Downing (Choctaw), Lynn Riggs (Cherokee), and D’Arcy McNickle (Confederated Salish and Kootenai)—are shown to be on par with writers of the preceding Progressive and the succeeding Red Power and Native American literary renaissance eras.

Arguing that American Indian literary history of this period actually coheres in exciting ways with the literature of the Native American literary renaissance, Cox repudiates the intellectual and political border that has emerged between the two eras.

James H. Cox is associate professor of English and associate director of Native American and Indigenous studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Muting White Noise: Native American and European American Novel Traditions.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: American Indian Literature and Indigenous Mexico

1. Dreadful Armies: Indigenistas and Other Criminals in Todd Downing’s Detective Novels

2. ¡Indian Territory!: Lynn Riggs’ Indigenous Geographies

3. “Mexico Is an Indian Country”: American Indian Diplomacy in Native Nonfiction and Todd Downing’s The Mexican Earth

4. The Red Land of the South: Indigenous Kinship in D’Arcy McNickle’s Runner in the Sun

5. The Return to Mexico: Gerald Vizenor and Leslie Marmon Silko at the Quincentennial

Conclusion: Revolutions before the Renaissance

Notes

Bibliography

Index