'Joined together in history': Politics and place in African American and American Indian women's writing

This dissertation explores the issue of place—the intersection of land and history—in contemporary African American and American Indian women's literatures. Arguing that “belonging” has political dimensions, this project centers on the relationship between concepts of place and issues of nationhood, community, and citizenship. Putting African American and American Indian women's novels in dialogue with one another, the dissertation considers the available vocabularies for talking about place, and addresses how a comparative perspective changes our understanding of fundamental issues in Black and Indian Studies: identity and belonging, race and nation.; This project begins with the consideration of an unexpected, and unremarked on, similarity in African American and American Indian literary criticisms: the idea of place in both cases is enmeshed in and articulated through (particularly gendered) ideas about modernity, and its “antithesis,” tradition. While literary critics set out to describe the specific historical experiences of Black and Native peoples in the U.S., they often end up endorsing generic, “universal” narratives about identity, history, and geography. Putting Black and Indian literary criticisms side-by-side reveals the pervasiveness (and limitations) of this generalized discourse of modernity. This dissertation challenges the assumption that ideas about “modernity” offer the best framework for understanding place.; Using an interdisciplinary perspective—drawing on intellectual history and political theory—the dissertation searches for another language through which to apprehend matters involving land and history. I explore how recent novels by Native women grapple with ideas about nationhood and tribal sovereignty, and suggest that these discussions are invaluable for rethinking ideas about race, place, and nationhood more broadly. Looking at African American and American Indian women's novels both on their own (where central images of community and nationhood emerge) and conjunctively (where Black-Indian cross-racial relations are depicted), the dissertation considers the significance of historical and political connections between Blacks and Indians in the U.S. with regard to issues of geography, history, and belonging. Novelists include Linda Hogan (Chickasaw), Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe), Diane Glancy (Cherokee), Carole laFavor (Ojibwe), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, and Thulani Davis.