When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

by Mark Rifkin (Author)

Synopsis

When Did Indians Become Straight?explores the complex relationship between sexual mores and shifting forms of Native American self-representation. It offers a cultural and literary history that stretches from the early-nineteenth century to the early-twenty-first century, demonstrating how Euramerican and Native writers have drawn on discourses of sexuality in portraying Native peoples and their sovereignty.

$80.07

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 440
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 10 Feb 2011

ISBN 10: 0199755469
ISBN 13: 9780199755462

Media Reviews
When did Indians become straight? When we started pretending to be, with and without the help of those who would straighten us. Let's stop pretending or let's get crooked and pretend something better. Let's read Mark Rifkin's book that combines the best of historical inquiry, literary/theoretical analysis, and thinking outside straight lines in ways that confront us with the power of deviant views of familiar, and some unfamiliar, texts and policies. * Craig Womack, author of Drowning in Fire *
A fabulously original work! Two of America's leading authorities on Black Language and Culture draw on their expertise and extensive scholarship to profoundly reshape the national conversation on race by languaging it. In complicating compliments about President Obama's articulateness, they brilliantly analyze his artful use of language and America's response to it as a springboard to consider larger, thought-provoking questions about language, education, power and what Toni Morrison has referred to as the cruel fallout of racism. Few sociolinguists tackle these complex issues with as much insight, sophistication, and downright directness as Alim and Smitherman. As they firmly conclude, it's time to change the game - and this book does just that. * John R. Rickford, J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University, and co-author of Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English *
In asking 'When did Indians become straight?', Mark Rifkin isn't simply being provocative: he's setting the critical foundation for what is undoubtedly the most incisive, well-researched, respectful, and thoroughly engaging study of sexuality and gender in American Indian literature, and one of the best works of criticism in the field in recent years. * Daniel Heath Justice, Associate Professor of English, University of Toronto *
The ideas contained in Rifkin's book are fresh, provocative, and vital to understanding the American past, present and future. * LeftEyeOnBooks.com *
When Did Indians Become Straight? is a groundbreaking study of the uses of the native in the making of critical theory and national belonging. * Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University *
Author Bio
Mark Rifkin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space (OUP 2009).