Maurice Kenny

"This bold new collection by acclaimed Mohawk writer Maurice Kenny explores the interrelationship of life and art. The first section, "Lines on Canvas," looks at the work of famous artists, many of whom were homosexual, as reflections of their personal lives. Their art reveals the bitterness and agony of having to live secret lives, but it also reveals joy and beauty. The final poem in this section, a brilliant imagining of a conversation between the poet, the painter Camille Pissarro, and the island boy in a sketch by Pissarro, brings the flavor of the Caribbean islands vividly to life in an exquisite marriage of words and art. "Lines on Paper," the second section, a companion piece to Kenny's American Book Award-winning The Mama Poems, draws a portrait of the poet as a young man and his often difficult relationship with a father whose womanizing left a permanent scar on the poet's life. We see in these poems the love/hate relationship he had with a father who took him hunting and fishing and came to retrieve him and take him back home when he ran into difficulties, yet also treated his mother unkindly and showed little faith in his son's ability to have a successful life. It's through the art of writing that the poet is able to meld his father's two identities into a touching portrait of an ordinary man."--Jacket.

American Book Award winner Maurice Kenny, a major voice in Native American literature, has long been known for his poetry. A true storyteller in the native tradition, he has in recent years turned his voice to prose, both fiction and non-fiction. In this diverse collection he writes of such little-known and controversial issues as the gay tradition in Native American history and looks at how his Mohawk background has impacted his own life and writing. The first section of the book shows us what is seldom found in books: history from a Native American vantage point. In the book's second part, Kenny delves into how Native Americans have fared in literature through the years, both as subjects and as authors. Beginning with an essay on the importance of the Native American oral tradition and of cultural roots, the section ends with Kenny's reverent hymn to his own roots and to the homeland to which he returned after years as a Mohawk poet on the road.

As one of the earliest and strongest voices in contemporary American Indian literature, Maurice Kenny has proved himself to be very much a "high-steel" Iroquois - a Mohawk famed for scaling the heights of New York City and forging a contemporary Native American identity known nationwide. This latest collection includes old and new favorites in poetry, fiction, criticism, and political commentary, plus an unusual literary memoir of New York in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s - upstate, Manhattan, and Brooklyn - from a Native American poet's point of view.

A collection of short stories by thirty-five Native American authors ranging from those who have achieved mainstream success to young writers just starting out.