Análisis de diario de la biblioteca
$19.95. f ``I have a mission: To make the Dakota people understandable, as human beings, to the white people who have to deal with them.'' That commitment, strengthened by more than 20 years of research with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, inspired Yankton Sioux ethnologist Deloria to write this novel, completed in 1944 but published only now. Set in Sioux country in the 19th century and beginning with a dramatic birth, it portrays intricate kinship rituals and the compelling minutiae of daily life. A richly female perspective balances traditional male values expressed in warfare and hunting. Intended as popular literature, the novel is an amalgam of meticulous research and enduring intimacies available only to outsiders. A captivating narrative, recommended for general as well as subject collections. Rhoda Carroll, Vermont Coll., Montpelier (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Análisis semanal de editoriales
Deloria was a Sioux Indian and an ethnologist who worked with anthropologist Franz Boas. Written in the early 1940s and now published for the first time, this culturally detailed novel of 19th century Sioux life focuses on a young girl named Waterlily. When her mother Blue Bird is deserted by her husband, she and her daughter are welcomed by relatives at their tiyospaye (encampment of related households) on the western plains. Deloria portrays Waterlily's maturation, daily tribal life and the crucial ``kinship rules.'' As the author wrote elsewhere, the Sioux concept of kinship meant ``achieving civility, good manners, and a sense of responsibility toward every individual dealt with.'' Waterlily learns she must show altruism and generosity, be courteous, demure and truthful, and highly value each family member. While this novel's plot is slight, Deloria clearly accomplished what was probably her true goalpresenting an authoritative, expertly researched account of Sioux beliefs, social conventions and ceremonies. As such, it is an absorbing document. Literary Guild alternate. (April) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
Análisis de CHOICE
Born on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1889, Deloria went to New York to study at Columbia University. There, in 1915, she began to work as a research assistant for Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology. Deloria's subsequent contributions to linguistics, folklore, and to American Indian Studies generally, are well-known to students of Plains Indians. Now, thanks to the archival research of Raymond J. DeMallie, scholars have a surprise: a historical novel written by Deloria, which portrays mid-19th-century Plains Indian life written from a Sioux woman's perspective. Readers will be interested in comparing Deloria's fiction not only to Mourning Dove's Cogewea (1927--another historical novel written about the same time by another Plains Indian woman under the patronage of another anthropologist), but also to James Welch's more recent and masterful representation of 19th-century Plains Indian life in Fools Crow (CH, Apr '87). In 1952, Deloria wrote: "This may sound a little naive...but I actually feel that I have a mission: to make the Dakota people understandable, as human beings, to the white people who have to deal with them." Public and academic libraries. -L. Evers, University of Arizona |
Análisis de lista de libros
This unique novel focuses on the life of Waterlily, a Plains Sioux,and profiles the role of women in native American society before the coming of the white settlers. Deloria's direct narrative details cultural information about the Sioux, including specific women's rituals, duties, religious beliefs, relationships, and skills. Concluding nonfictional material discusses the life and career of the author, a Sioux herself and a noted ethnologist. An authentic piece of historical fiction for public libraries. JMM. [CIP] 87-21462 |
Reseña de Kirkus
Exquisite evocation, in novelistic form, of the life of a female Dakota (Sioux) in the mid-19th century, before whites settled the plains. Deloria (1889-1971), a Sioux ethnologist who studied at Columbia and worked with preeminent anthropologist Franz Boas, wrote the book 50 years ago; this is its first publication. Waterlily, is born unceremoniously one hot day during a move from one camp site to another. Her mother, Blue Bird, simply steps out of the line of march and delivers the baby herself. Later, when the end of the umbilical cord withers and falls from Waterlily's navel, Blue Bird will wrap it in down and put it inside a little painted wooden turtle she's made as a plaything for her daughter; when Waterlily grows up, the turtle will serve as belt buckle and talisman. It is thus--gently and intriguingly--that we learn Sioux custom from infancy to death. The book's plot-turns reflect the developments--sometimes tragic, at limes funny, always dignified--of an Indian girl's coming of age. Waterlily shares a delightful childhood with a boy, Little Chief, who adopts her as his sister; and in adolescence she shares confidences with teen-age girlfriends, some of whom are less tactful than she. For Waterlily will become a model Sioux woman--demure yet capable. She marries, loses her first husband to disease, give birth, and remarries. Throughout it all we are treated, in the most digestible way, to the richness of Sioux lore and ritual--buffalo hunting, prayer, ceremony, the social codes between men and women, young and old. An unself-conscious and never precious or quaint pairing of scholarship and fiction. Includes a biographical sketch of the author by Agnes Picotte, who discovered the long-buried manuscript. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. |