Summer in the Spring: Anishinaabe Lyric Poems and Stories (Volume 6)

by Gerald Vizenor (Editor)

The Anishinaabe, otherwise named the Ojibwe or Chippewa, are famous for their lyric songs and stories, particularly because of their compassionate trickster, naanabozbo, and the healing rituals still practiced today in the society of the Midewiwin. The poems and tales, interpreted and reexpressed here by the distinguished Anishinaabe author Gerald Vizenor, were first transcribed more than a century ago by pioneering ethnographer Frances Densmore and Theodore Hudson Beaulieu, a newspaper editor on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. This superb anthology, illustrated with tribal pictomyths and helpfully annotated, includes translations and a glossary of the Anishinaabe words in which the poems and stories originally were spoken.

Genres: Poetry

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1981

About the author

Gerald Robert Vizenor is an Anishinaabe writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Reviews

[Janice]

Diss

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was for a research project I'm doing in one of my classes. It was an interesting read.

[Lyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are so many songs and stories packed into this little book. No space is wasted. I loved the collection of cultural stories at the end of this book because they span such a variety of topics. From going through puberty to trickster tales, you will learn a ton. I don't think the lyric poems/songs are formatted super well because as someone outside Anishanaabe culture it was very hard to tell where one started and ended.