The Man to Send Rain Clouds

by Kenneth Rosen (Editor), Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon J. Ortiz

Anthropologists have long delighted use with the wise and colorful folk tales they transcribed from their Indian informants. The stories in this collection, mostly by young Indians are another matter altogether: these are white-educated Indians, bitterly aware that their culture is threatened with destruction, trying to bear witness through a non-Indian genre, the short story.

A few years ago a young professor, Kenneth Rosen, doing graduate work in the southwestern United States, came upon some stories, written by Indians, which prompted him to undertake a search for more. Over a two-year period he followed leads from town to town, pueblo to pueblo, finally managing to uncover a total of forty stories. From them he has culled the eighteen works contained in this volume. All reveal, to various degrees and in varying ways, the preoccupations of contemporary American Indians. Not surprisingly, many are infused with the bitterness of a people and a culture long repressed. Several deal with violence (two, quite coincidentally, relate to the killing, by Indians, of a white cop) and the effort to escape from the pervasive, and so often destructive, white influence and system. Some are nostalgic, without being sentimental. In most, the enduring strength of the Indian past, what the editor terms "the insistent drums of tradition," are very much in evidence, evoked as a kind of counterpoint to the repression and aimlessness that gave marked, and still mark today, the lives of so many American Indians.

Genres: Short Stories, Indigenous, Fiction, Native American

178 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

KENNETH ROSEN was born in Boston, and has lived in Maine since 1965. He recently taught at the American University in Bulgaria, and as a Fulbright professor at Sofia University. Whole Horse, his first collection, was selected for Richard Howard’s Braziller Poetry Series. Others are The Hebrew Lion, Black Leaves, Longfellow Square, Reptile Mind, and No Snake, No Paradise. He founded the Stonecoast Writers’ Conference in 1981, and directed it for ten years.

Reviews

[East Bay J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in 1974, The Man To Send Rain Clouds is a collection of short stories by American Indian authors. As the back cover says, "these are white educated Indians attempting to bear witness through a non-Indain genre, the short story." Mission accomplished. The writing from all the included authors is powerful and effective. My favorites were "Kaiser And The War" by Simon J. Ortiz for its language, "Impressions On Turning Wombward" by Joseph Little for its mood and "A Geronimo Story" by Leslie Silko for its cleverness and optimism.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book introduced me to LMSilko

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something special for me about Native American literature.

Maybe it’s because so many of the stories take place in lands that I also have known. For I too am a child of the southwest and have the desert sands, the hostile wildness and the frightening monsoons raging through my own tempestuous soul.

In my own youth I would explore the wildness of our lands. Wildness which the soft people of the east don’t really understand. A world of grand distances, of dangerous animals and deadly insects. Of guns and a war both against nature and each other and salted by the recent reminders of life scraped out at the very fringes of civilization. Tombstone: The Town Too Tough To Die. Photographs of Geronimo and Big Nose Kate and Wyatt Earp not imported by the elites but because that’s where they were taken, and its where they belong. Jerome, a city lost now in its own past as well after the mines dried up, the resting place of the lost ghosts of our past. The tribal lands that we pass through often stopping to eat some food – fry bread perhaps – while looking at a monument sacred and enduring. The Navajo and the Pueblo and the Apache. The Hopi with their amazing artwork; in silver and turquoise, delicate like the desert mountain flowers, the spirits of the land awakened by the expert care of the craftsmen.

Life out west is filled more with nature – we are closer to our forests and our lakes and our mountains; we remember days when they were not fully contained in the national imagination, when they were still empty and unconquered; they often still are. “The French have romanticized the Tuareg, like we have our own western history,” an uncomprehending easterner once told me, his voice thick with the sneer of the calcified supervised societies of New England. We were working together in Mali, and he couldn’t understand it – just as he didn’t understand my desert and the indomitable spirit of its wanderers. “They don’t realize that those times have moved on forever, that the past is gone.” Except its not gone, because it still lives in the caves where we find the remnants of ancient fights; in the guns we still carry because the distances are too great and we are responsible for ourselves. Where we still look out over a vast free open space, big skies and indomitable mountains and we contemplate the wildness and the freedom.

But there’s the other side too; that which makes Native American literature haunting. The stories are so full of sorrow and nostalgia; of a past long lost and forgotten, stories of defeat without future, of a futility and sadness that has become such a part of the lives of the people from the ancient tribes and clans of American pre-history. To have lost everything; but yet to still abide – that is the great dilemma; and it is the job of the good writers to capture it. My writing is also full of desperation and hardship and trials, from places I have been and things I have seen; of past and meaning and loss. It is for the sensitive writer to fill pages with this; not with adventure and sex, but instead with yearning.

I just finished The Man to Send Rain Clouds. It is a collection of short stories written by Native American authors – and they are lovely and haunting and powerful. Full of the richness of a life lived close to the land and the bitterness of loss. You must read these, if you claim to love literature – to love America. Read them even, or perhaps especially, if you are from the calcified safe societies of the east. You will be better for it.

[Noach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been one of my favorite books in a long time. I learned so much, felt so much, about the cultures the writers in this anthology shared. After finishing, i was moved to find out more about every contributing author, and noticed that all of them had contributed to an English language flowering of indigenous peoples' stories, in the late 60s and early 70s. Each writer scored a mark in my heart, and, i feel, helped to open the path of healing and renewal that is more broadly visible today (looking from my vantage far outside) in tribal/intertribal spaces.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tiny little gem was published in 1974 thanks to Mr. Kenneth Rosen and a handful of native Indian writers. The common thread of the indigenous writers, the cryptic bios, the stark geography of the US southwest, and above all the stories, combined to make this compilation of short stories immensely enjoyable.

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written more than thirty years ago but still is completely relevant in todays society. The book is a in our own voices anthology and has stories and poems as well as art revolving around the indigenous experience.

[Sarah High]

once again i’ll say that i don’t love short stories…. but…. some of these were really intoxicating and i think this is a very important collection. it was also a collection that was lent to me by a dear friend who i trust. so it was special in more ways than one.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poem, “Come, My Sons” by Anna Lee Walters is beautiful.

[Carol Stanley-Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

You will like some of these stories. Some stories will hurt your heart. All stories will touch you.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Man to Send Rain Clouds is a collection of short stories, originally published in 1974, by some of the most notable American Indian authors and poets of the American Indian renaissance movement. As the editor explains, "It is my conviction that what is going on in the minds and hearts of American Indians today can best be told by Indians themselves, through their fiction" (ix).

The first story is authored by Leslie Marmon Silko, the titular "The Man to Send Rain Clouds," which opens up with a dead body being found (as often is tradition in American Indian literature, a death usually starts a story).

The story "The San Francisco Indians" by Simon Ortiz is part of the new historicism theory, discusses peyote, addresses the urban Indian movement by saying, "The People were going all over the world. Indians were everywhere" (12).

Anna Lee Walters writes "Come, My Sons," a story where she asks to tell her sons a story--showing how important oral tradition is today, even though some have abandoned storytelling culture. The stories and songs are also accompanied by many nice drawings.

Leslie Marmon Silko's "Yellow Woman" has been anthologized quite a lot, but remains one of the strongest pieces in the collection. It opens beautifully, with, "My thigh clung to his with dampness, and I watched the sun rising up through the tamaracks and willows" (33). The story proceedes to tell a story about a woman tempted by a gorgeous and mysterious man.

"Kaiser and the War," by Simon Ortiz, has some notes on schooling and the divide between English and Native languages. It is definitely worth a read. Another historical piece worthy of reading is "Tony's Story" by Leslie Marmon Silko--which chronicles an encounter between a white policeman and Native men. The story itself is based on a true account in which a white cop was killed by a Native driver he had pulled over and harassed. The story must be read in this collection though, as it packs a punch despite being so short.

Unfortunately, there are many forgettable stories nestled in the collection. That is not to say they are not good, just that they get lost in between some of the more notable stories/author pairings. Others are lost or forgotten because of some of their seemingly-too-simple lines, like "The sun caressed his back" from "Whispers from a Dead World" by Joseph Little (31).

[Ellen B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent stories. Some illustrated by RC Gorman!!!!