The People Who Stayed

by HOBSON

The two-hundred-year-old myth of the “vanishing” American Indian still holds some credence in the American Southeast, the region from which tens of thousands of Indians were relocated after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Yet, as the editors of this volume amply demonstrate, a significant Indian population remained behind after those massive relocations.

The first anthology to focus on the literary work of Native Americans who trace their  ancestry to “people who stayed” in southeastern states after 1830, this volume represents every state and every genre, including short stories, excerpts from novels, poetry, essays, plays, and even Web postings. Although most works are contemporary, the collection covers the entire post-Removal era. Some of the contributors are well known, while others have only recently emerged as important literary voices.

All of the writers in The People Who Stayed affirm their Indian ancestry, though many live outside the Southeast today. As this anthology demonstrates, indigenous Southeastern writing engages the local and the global, the traditional and the modern. While many speak to the prospects and perils of acculturation, all the writers bear witness to the ways, oblique or straightforward, that they and their families continue to honor their Indian identities despite the legacy of removal.

In an introduction to the volume and in headnotes on each contributor, the editors provide historical context and literary insight on the diversity of writing and lived experiences found in these pages. All readers, from students to scholars, will gain newfound understanding of the literature — and the human experience — of Native people of the American Southeast.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

362 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2010

Reviews

[Sondra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the texts in this collection are 5 star. Others are just 1 or 2 stars. Overall I feel like it included too much poetry. Some of that poetry could have been framed better if they included more narrative pieces for context. I will definitely revisit some of the texts but overall it’s just 3 stars for me.

[Kristen Suagee-beauduy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the collection as a whole because I had never seen the demographic represented in a book-length treatment. The poetry wasn't my taste, but there were definitely golden nuggets. For example, the way the late Louis Owens writes about how he got talked into moving to Cali by his 2nd cousin to go to junior college and fell in love for the first time: "I could've gone to junior college right here in Mississippi, of course, but Cole McCurtain thought it'd be good for me to see something else, and he'd like California pretty well I guess. The first thing that happened, naturally, was I fell in love and suffered more than I ever thought a person could./ Cole McCurtain didn't help a bit when I called him to tell him how bad it was, just grinned over the phone. Adela Camacho was as beautiful as a winter sunrise on the river, when all that new light comes down through the black bones of tress and lays gold on the slow water and you don't hear nothing except maybe a lone dog out there in the deep woods and the air is that kind of sweet cold that makes you dizzy. Skin as smooth and brown as maple syrup, eyes black as the old man's but big and deep and a smile you couldn't forget in a million years. And that way of looking back just when you think she's gone./ It was true that I'd driven four days in a fifty-seven Chevy to talk to the old man. I was desperate, crazy in love and ignorant. I'd been stupid enough to propose marriage the fourth time we were together, sitting out in the Pismo dunes with a bottle of wine and a box of fried chicken. When she laughed, I felt like my heart had one of those cracks you get in a windshield, the kind that start out small but unless something's done it just keeps going right across until the whole thing comes apart in your face. Six months later, I knew I had to do something. I couldn't live without her, I knew that. One day she'd say she might love me, she didn't know, and then the next she'd act like she hardly knew me. And when she took me to her parents' house I felt like a space man sitting there with everybody talking Spanish and her sisters giggling behind their hands at me./ [Columbus Bailey] knew the kinds of medicines people needed. Right now I needed him to tell me how to make Adela Camacho fall head over heels all the way to the bottom in love with me and marry me (218-220)."

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice anthology but could have used a bit more contextualization. a mix of prose, poetry, and nonfiction that crosses boundaries in needed ways.

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book to get perspectives of Native Americans. This book helped to further my knowledge in a class I am taking.