PAULA GUNN ALLEN
G'day folks,
Welcome to the life of another talented woman. Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic,
lesbian activist, and novelist. She is of mixed-race European-American, Native
American, and Arab-American descent.
Paula
Gunn Allen was the daughter of a Lebanese-American father and a
Pueblo-Sioux-Scots mother. She was raised near Laguna and Acoma Pueblo
reservations and was influenced by the matriarchal Pueblo culture. She received
both her BA in English and her MFA in creative writing from the University of
Oregon, and a doctorate in American studies, with a concentration in Native
American literature, from the University of New Mexico.
In 1978 she received a National Endowment for
the Arts fellowship and in 1980, a fellowship to study Indian women's writings.
Her 1983 novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, reflected her own
upbringing.
Her collections of poetry include Coyote's Daylight Trip
(1978), Shadow Country (1982), and Life is a Fatal Disease
(1996). Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course
Designs (1983) is considered a landmark text in Native American literary
criticism. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions (1986) explores the importance of women in traditional Indian
culture.
Along
with Patricia Clark Smith, Allen wrote As Long as the Rivers Flow: The
Stories of Nine Native Americans (1996) for younger readers. Her latest
work is Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (2003),
a new look at Pocahontas through the eyes of a Native American woman. She has
taught at Fort Lewis College, San Diego State University, San Francisco State
University, the University of New Mexico, and retired in 1999 from the
University of California at Los Angeles.
Clancy's comment: Go, Paula!
I'm ...
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