Red On Red: Native American Literary Separatism

by Craig S. Womack

How can a square peg fit into a round hole? It can't. How can a door be unlocked with a pencil? It can't. How can Native literature be read applying conventional postmodern literary criticism? It can't. That is Craig Womack's argument in Red on Red. Indian communities have their own intellectual and cultural traditions that are well equipped to analyze Native literary production. These traditions should be the eyes through which the texts are viewed. To analyze a Native text with the methods currently dominant in the academy, according to the author, is like studying the stars with a magnifying glass. In an unconventional and piercingly humorous appeal, Womack creates a dialogue between essays on Native literature and fictional letters from Creek characters who comment on the essays. Through this conceit, Womack demonstrates an alternative approach to American Indian literature, with the letters serving as a "Creek chorus" that offers answers to the questions raised in his more traditional essays. Topics range from a comparison of contemporary oral versions of Creek stories and the translations of those stories dating back to the early twentieth century, to a queer reading of Cherokee author Lynn Riggs's play The Cherokee Night. Womack argues that the meaning of works by native peoples inevitably changes through evaluation by the dominant culture. Red on Red is a call for self-determination on the part of Native writers and a demonstration of an important new approach to studying Native works -- one that engages not only the literature, but also the community from which the work grew.

Genres: Indigenous, Nonfiction, Theory, Native American

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[Willow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent criticism and theory of Indigenous works. I loved his discussion of Harjo in particular. This is one I'll return to regularly.

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Womack's approach to Native American literature and literary studies is provocative, challenging, and problematic. He raises many useful questions and points out huge gaps in the study of Native American literature thus far--“Even postcolonial approaches, with so much emphasis on how the settler culture views the other, largely miss an incredibly important point: how do Indians view Indians?” (13)--making a strong case for increased Native involvement in literary studies of Native American literature as well as for thinking about Native American literature in more tribally specific terms. He says, “My concern has to do with the way we play into colonial discourse with these stories, the way we depoliticize our own literatures in an oral tradition genre that was once strongly nationalistic, and the way significant tribal differences are blurred and a sense of specific sovereignty is diminished. I am concerned about what happens to the political intent of the stories when they are separated from their tribal contexts, removed from a total existential situation” (62).

Furthermore, he argues, “I have felt that literature rises out of land and language and stories, and given that tribal nations have different landscapes, different languages, and different stories from the United States and England (and, importantly, tribal members and their nations are defined, legally, differently from the rest of the American citizenry, including America’s minorities), those differences must suggest rejection of the approach to teaching Native literature as simply some kind of ‘minority extension’ of the American canon” (76).

These two lengthy quotes indicate his position pretty clearly: Native American literature is tribally specific, tied to the nation/culture/land/language out of which it comes, and unique among minority literatures of the United States.

These two quotes do not, however, reveal the degree to which Womack advocates the "Native American Literary Separatism" of his subtitle. He is at times funny, at times bitter, and at times academic in his analysis of the relationship between Native literatures and white critics/the academy, but the gist of his argument on this point is pretty consistent: white people don't get it. This I have a problem with. And I don't think that's just because I'm white. I am fully aware that I don't get the Native American texts I read in the way that someone raised with these stories, these references, these places, would get them, but that's just as true of my reading of other minority literatures or literature based in other locations (e.g., New York or the Pacific Northwest). In all of those cases, I will be missing some of the picture. Why should this literature be that different?

Womack makes this separatist argument because he sees Native American literature as ultimately and necessarily political. He asks, “Are tribal literatures merely a salve, or should they engage in active critical political commentary? Should they concern themselves with tribal history and politics? Should they be a means of exploring more radical approaches to sovereignty? Should they seek the return of tribal lands? This book argues that the answer to such questions is a resounding ‘yes’” (149). I would agree that it is important to read such literature as political for there are major political issues at stake, but that does not mean that I agree with his reification of the us versus them dichotomy that says to non-Native readers, "It's an Indian thing. You just wouldn't get it."

Well. Maybe not. But I am not convinced that turning away those outsiders who are genuinely interested in the literature and culture is the way to create political change.

[Reema · Rating 4 out of 5]

craig womack definitely pulls no punches and, as uncomfortable as that can be, i respect him for it. from his critiques of what's "canonical" to native writers who don't write towards nation-building to calling out critics more comfortable with pretty native stories rather than formally challenging ones (that ask for, say, land redress) and even to grad school meanness (!), womack's is an honest, tough, and surprisingly optimistic voice. i can't say enough about how powerful his three chapters--on orality, joy harjo, and queerness--were, not only because he says what people haven't thought to say . . . like, orality should inform aesthetic, especially indigenous aesthetic, or like, joy harjo's move towards both creek specificity and pan-tribalism, or like, the tragic and poignant code-talking in lynn riggs' work . . . but because his criticism seems as much a kind of medicine as the art he endorses. he *believes* in the storytelling prowess of his community and, even more, the spiritual and material work it can and will do. like i said, despite some disagreement w/him, respect for sure.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. Womack is writing on something that scholars in NAS have been lobbying for many years.