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John Joseph Mathews: Life of an Osage Writer. By Michael Snyder. Foreword by Russ Tall Chief. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. vii + 252 pp. Illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index. $34.95 cloth.
John Joseph Mathews is a name held in literary reverence by virtually all Osages, and his writings have attracted increasing public attention again (he first rose to popularity in the early 1930s) as scholars have begun to pay more attention to American Indian literatures. As a fellow Osage, I have to applaud any booklength biography of Mathews as long overdue. Mathews's books, perhaps especially including WahKon-Tah; Sundown; and Talking to the Moon, ought to be on the reading list of every college student enrolled in Native American studies departments. So I read Michael Snyder's biography...