Shapes of Native Nonfiction

Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers

Theresa Warburton editor Elissa Washuta editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Washington Press

Published:28th Jun '19

Should be back in stock very soon

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Shapes of Native Nonfiction cover

Just as a basket’s purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket.

Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.

"In this anthology, shape matters. It turns the essay into a resistant form, pushing against the myth of the ‘disappearing Native’ and asserting a new narrative, one that isn’t subject to colonizing. . . . Shapes of Native Nonfiction is full of cognitive and emotional work. It turns the essay into something alive and breathing."

* Cincinnati Review *

"It's not hard to imagine this work as a staple of creative writing course syllabi for years to come. A must for any library."

* Library Journal *

"The medium is the message in this formally daring anthology of essays from Native writers, organized into basket-weaving themes such as 'coiling' and 'plaiting.' In these 27 essays by writers hailing from multiple tribal nations, some established and some newcomers, the Native experience is interrogated, elucidated, and celebrated."

* Esquire *

"This new collection of essays from established and emerging contemporary Indigenous writers is stunning both in depth and scope. . . . In these pages, storytelling is a way of developing new Native nonfiction literary possibility."

* Literary Hub *

"A veritable feast of First Nations and Native American writers that readers may otherwise never have discovered."

* World Literature Today *

"Shapes of Native Nonfiction introduces the reader to a unique collection of voices, telling stories that shift from lost to living language, from history to lived experience. These shifts create new shapes for Indigenous writers to inhabit, explore and share. In this anthology, that shaping makes for a powerful read, and an absolutely necessary one."

* High Country News *

"In this far-ranging collection of essays, Indigenous writers explore family, home, landscape, identity, trauma, history, and memory. Some of the essays are about writing itself. Others tell stories about particular experiences or moments. Still others are more outwardly focused, exploring art, culture, and politics. Part of what makes this book so unique is the various innovative forms the essays take."

* Book Ri

  • Short-listed for Washington State Book Awards 2019 (United States)

ISBN: 9780295745756

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 386g

280 pages