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Alan R. Velie and A. Robert Lee, eds. The Native American Renaissance: Literary Imagination and Achievement. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. 376 pp. Paper, $29.95.
Thirty years after Kenneth Lincolns The Native American Renaissance, which declared and defined the "rebirth" of indigenous storytelling within an emerging body of written work, editors Velie and Lee present a collection of essays charting that literatures ongoing maturation (the study is part of a series from the University of Oklahoma Press, with the next volume turning from literary expression to the visual arts, including film). That such a project could only properly be conceived now as a collective enterprise-involving multiple authors who debate the significance of a stunning range of texts, as well as various theoretical framings of them-speaks to the field's extraordinary growth. If Lincoln had to argue for the legitimacy of his subject in 1983, the challenge now is to assess its vital, dynamic range.
A number of prominent voices in Native American literary criticism contribute essays here, from Velie and Lee themselves, to Jace Weaver, Rebecca Tillett, Kimberley M. Blaeser, David Stirrup, and Lincoln...