Jeannette Armstrong's &lt;em&gt;Slash&lt;/em&gt; and the Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature

Suhr-Sytsma, Mandy

doi:10.5250/studamerindilite.28.4.0025

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…Critical analysis of children's literature focusing on books about Indigenous children and youth is vastly underrepresented in scholarship (Suhr‐Sytsma, 2016, 2019). Key to the very small pool of existing scholarship is critique of non‐Indigenous authors who are seemingly unaware or “oblivious” to the ways in which whiteness “as a normative mode of being” has been encoded and normalized in children's literature (Bradford, 2007, p. 226).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resistance Literature: Representations of Land and Indigeneity in Indigenous‐Authored, Canadian Award‐Winning Rural Young Adult and Middle‐Grade Fiction

Eppley,

Wood,

Stagg‐Peterson

2023

J Adolescent & Adult Lit

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Sixty percent of Indigenous people in Canada live rurally and on reserve but are largely absent among young adult and middle‐grade fiction. This critical content analysis examines representations of the land and rural places and Indigenous identities in Canadian award‐winning fiction written by Indigenous authors for young adult and middle‐grade readers. By positioning land, place, and rural Indigenous youth identities and experiences at the center of the analysis, the study contradicts dominant colonizing perspectives of “rural” and “Indigenous” that undervalue and/or disregard the lives, knowledge, and perspectives of rural Indigenous community members. Critical content analysis makes visible the books' complex representations of rural land and identities where Indigenous characters are agentic, resilient, and adaptable in the face of settler colonialism.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resistance Literature: Representations of Land and Indigeneity in Indigenous‐Authored, Canadian Award‐Winning Rural Young Adult and Middle‐Grade Fiction

Eppley,

Wood,

Stagg‐Peterson

2023

J Adolescent & Adult Lit

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Trauma, History, the Indigenous Novel, and the Now

Calcaterra¹

2019

Studies in the Novel

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Introducing Nancy Van Styvendale's "The Trans/histor i city of Trauma in Jeanette Armstrong's Slash and Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer," first published in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 40, No. 1-2 (special number: "Postcolonial Trauma Novels"), spring & summer 2008, pp. 203-23.Nancy Van Styvendale's sensitive analysis of "trans/historical" trauma in Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer (1996) and Jeanette Armstrong's Slash (1985) has been referenced in work on the legacy of early American captivity narratives, on college student-prisoner reading groups in the United States, on Australian aboriginal memoir, on survivor narratives from the Canadian Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and on Alexie's and Armstrong's work in particular (Ben-Zvi; Wiltse; Seran; Angel; Carpenter; Coulombe; Laminack; Suhr-Sytsma). Such wide-ranging scholarship vindicates Van Styvendale's call to consider Native/Indigenous experiences of trauma as intergenerational, collective, and enduring, historically grounded but not able to be isolated to a single traumatic event. Equally conversant in Indigenous studies and trauma theory, Van Styvendale's essay details the "trauma of dislocation and rootlessness" in Indian Killer and Slash to challenge both event-focused and poststructuralist understandings of trauma. For Van Styvendale, Indigenous trans/historical trauma is both dislocated from a singular time and space and characterized by ongoing material effects: "the trauma of colonization is present not only in its psychic return but also in its continuation in everyday, material conditions" (220).In Indian Killer and Slash, this trauma manifests as repetitive, violent rage, a rage that surfaces in a number of other Indigenous novels. For instance, although Lisamarie, the Haisla protagonist of Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach (2000), does not undergo the same tortures of residential school that her

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Indigenous Young Adult Literature

Matthews

Bennett²,

Joian³

et al. 2019

elip

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Over the last decade Indigenous Young Adult (YA) literature has risen in popularity and demand in library programming and collections. Many works draw on the rich historical and cultural significance of narratives, oral history and storytelling in Indigenous communities. Their rise in prominence presents new opportunities for libraries to work with Indigenous authors and groups to share the importance of Indigenous histories and works in and through library spaces, collections and programming. However, in the context of popular culture including Indigenous YA literature, it is important to consider the identity and representation of Indigenous people, cultures and histories. The following annotated bibliography has been developed to guide libraries on the appropriate professional and cultural competencies to compliment this rising body of work and foster respect and recognition of Indigenous communities and works.

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Jeannette Armstrong's <em>Slash</em> and the Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Resistance Literature: Representations of Land and Indigeneity in Indigenous‐Authored, Canadian Award‐Winning Rural Young Adult and Middle‐Grade Fiction

Resistance Literature: Representations of Land and Indigeneity in Indigenous‐Authored, Canadian Award‐Winning Rural Young Adult and Middle‐Grade Fiction

Trauma, History, the Indigenous Novel, and the Now

Indigenous Young Adult Literature

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