Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism

Rating:
Summary: It's about time....Thank you Craig Womack!
Review: A most insightful look into the gaps in the American literary "canon." How appropriate for him to assert that American Indians "are the canon." I also agree with Womack when he complains that English departments mistakenly attempt to relegate AI lit. to minority studies, where we "throw in a little Ralph Ellison, a native author once in a while, and string it all together with the same damn Bakhtin quotes we've all heard a million times, reduicng literary studies to little more than an English department version of the melting pot." How I laughed out loud when I read those lines! This is one of the few books on lit crit that I actually enjoyed reading, and remained awake all the way to the end of the book.

Womack is also right on target when he complains about how white critics miss the point in the reciprocity of cultural exchange: "Why is it always assumed, furthermore, that Native is assimilated by white, not the other way around?" This is an excellent observation which demands further study. Why else are there so many white "wannabes" running around with "authentic" Indian names publishing books, attending local powwows, etc.?

And if anyone can dispell the myth of academic supremacy, it's Jim Chibbo and his buddy Hotgun, who tell "a few funny stories" at the end of every chapter to "avoid the nastiness of a profession that is just pitiful mean."

Rating:
Summary: Briliant and funny
Review: Craig Womak's "Red on Red" is a briliant analysis of the current state of Native Literature. He gives the reader insights and guidance for understanding native writers, and a scholar can learn the much needed literary foundations for learning to "read" native writers. THEN, just to prove that even criticism is fun, he changes up in mid-stream and offers extremely hilarious narratives, written from his own Creek roots. Very fun to read, and an engaging writer.

Rating:
Summary: Groundbreaking study
Review: Womack's book is the most provocative and important study of Native American literature since Arnold Krupat's Ethnocriticism in 1992. It is the first to really show what a tribally centered criticism can look like, and offers a remarkable synthesis of work by other Native scholars. While he is occasionally too dismissive of non-Natives, he is also funny, subtle, and persuasive in writing.