Erika T. Wurth | April 2021

So much has happened in Native American fiction in the last few years, that the piece I wrote on the Fourth Wave of fiction only a handful of years ago, seems nearly out of date. In that piece, I spoke about the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Waves of Native American fiction—and what set, if anything, the latest wave apart. I defined the Fourth Wave as one that had moved towards not pandering to a non-Native audience. One that often used postmodern, or experimental, aesthetic techniques, in which attention to (often poetic) language was dominant over plot, and even over characterization. So much so that, many times, writers were not just leading with poetic language, but even borrowing from poetic techniques with repetition, use of space on the page, and alternative punctuation (punctuation that obeys more poetic rules, versus traditional prose). I also noted that there was more in the way of Indigenous languages used in the Fourth Wave—and often, without translation. And that even work in English often centers the verb, as is the case in traditional Indigenous languages, versus the noun in English, in recent Native American fiction.

At this point, in the United States alone, we have a plethora of titles that might be considered a Fifth Wave—with their own distinct, still-emerging markers. And, for the first time, issues of Native urbanity are moving to the surface in realism/literary fiction in the United States. Additionally, in that wave of work gaining mainstream attention, also, for the first time, are major works of fiction in the genres of science-fiction/fantasy, and crime. Although there were books in the United States by Native authors that touched on these issues before, what seems to be happening is unprecedented in American literary history.

Focusing solely on fiction for adults (and crossover/edgy YA), this unexpected surge in what has traditionally been called genre, or commercial fiction, by Native writers—is truly something—though their work, in many ways, could certainly be deemed literary. To be clear though, “literary” is a term that seems to stand in, historically, for realism, and these days, for postmodern and/or experimental work. It’s more productive to be concrete. Literary, rather than a genre, is a series of criteria: depth of theme, attention to form and language, complex characterization, and complexity or mastery of structure. Though it’s true that commercial fiction that has spaceships or cops, and is more narrative, or story-driven, is often more financially viable, this doesn’t necessarily mean anything about quality. It speaks to genre—which speaks to a series of conventions depending on the genre. And these genres, in the American and Canadian Native literary scenes—are providing a very radical, interesting break in Native fiction—though there is some divergence in the way that they’re going about it.

What has been fascinating in looking at this current incarnation in Native letters, however, has been the intersections between Native literature in the United States, and their contemporary counterparts in Canada. At times, the commonalities become clear. But in terms of the differences between the work, the history, and most especially the reaction to the work in the United States versus a country—Canada—where, for example, the phrase “urban Indian” is nothing but commonplace, and has been for years, is revealing. Though to be clear, the word “Indian” has been mainly replaced, in Canada, with the phrase “First Nations,” and is often deemed—even more so than in the United States—offensive.

Without going deep into the highly complicated and fraught subject of identity in Native culture/s, the reported Native population of the United States looks larger than the reported Canadian, mainly because Canada has a much smaller overall population than the United States. In general, the Native population in Canada is much more highly visible than it is in the United States. Add to this dynamic the fact that though both countries participated in the genocide—removal and placement of Native peoples into residential and boarding schools. In Canada, it is much more common for the average citizen to have a realistic (if racist) portrait of Native people in everyday, lived realities, than is the case in the United States, where self-identification is common—and even the sense that all Natives (or “authentic” Natives) have died off. Not to mention, the difference in tangible, recorded census-driven histories between the two, where Canada was more willing to record the presence of off-reserve First Nations people, unlike their counterparts in the United States. The dynamic, as it spills into Native American lives, cultures, and literature, is different.

However, in looking at contemporary Native literature in the United States and in Canada—the difference is still a puzzle. What differs, in these two countries, that makes the idea of urban Indians in Canada commonplace—in reality, and in literature—and in the United States, a (mainstream) revelation, as demonstrated with the massive popularity of Tommy Orange’s There There? Though this is far from the first novel about urban Indians in the United States, it was widely marketed as if it was. In articles about the novel, it is rarely—if ever—mentioned that there are a number of novels and collections about this very issue in the United States.

Historically, the most well-known writer (in the United States) whose work engages issues of Native urbanity, is Susan Power, whose novel The Grass Dancer, was published by a major press, one of the “big five,” in 1994. Now a standard in many Native American literature courses, the novel marked the career of a well-known—and certainly urban writer. Like much of Where The Dead Sit Talking, Sacred Smokes, and There There (peers of Orange), the novel takes place primarily off-reservation. So why wasn’t it marketed as speaking to an urban Indian population, with the fierceness of Orange’s work? To be fair, there are a number of parts of the novel that take place on the Standing Rock reservation, unlike in Orange’s novel. But this doesn’t explain the difference in mainstream perception. Additionally, author Greg Sarris’s Grand Avenue, which took place in a completely urban setting—was absolutely marketed as an urban Indian novel. And, yet, again, it’s as if Orange’s work is treated as singular in this fashion.

In moving to the contemporaries of Orange mentioned above, there is the deeply voice-driven sharp Sacred Smokes, by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., which is certainly an urban collection, with lines like, “Just so you know, there are a shit ton of gangbangers in Chicago,” and “My city-kid instincts are on point. What the fuck. It looks like Hieronymus Bosch painted a frat exploding in the middle of a financial district career fair that had an 80’s hangover.” Smokes is a wonderfully gritty collection that in many ways epitomizes urban Indian life. One must acknowledge, however, that collections of short stories—and by university and/or independent presses, have a tougher time garnering a wide audience.

Looking at Where The Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson—also a novel set in an urban (if one merely means nonreservation) setting—and thinking forward to contemporary Canadian fiction, is where we see the strongest commonality between There There—and especially, with Canadian Native fiction. Much like in Canadian fiction, Talking isn’t interested in a stark binary, in terms of whether it’s speaking to an urban or reservation population—it’s interested in telling a good story. To be fair, part of this dynamic comes from the nature of the author’s—and main character’s— tribal Nation. Much like every other Native nation in Oklahoma (with the exception of the Osage), the Cherokee nation did not have a reservation, per se, up until recently, with the historic McGirt v. Oklahoma decision—but a series of allotments held by individuals, and a series of rights, if you will, held under their recognition as a Nation with a singular, sovereign, federal status. However, this is also the case with Orange, whose nation also resides in Oklahoma (though Orange grew up in Oakland, Hobson, Oklahoma). What makes Dead different, in so many regards, is precisely what is admirable about much of Canadian Indigenous fiction—it’s invested in telling the story, and wonderfully. And it’s a memorable story, about a much-ignored dynamic in the Native world, speaking to a teenager caught in the social work system, with bits of Cherokee culture woven throughout, issues of identity—Indian—and in terms of gender—and a plot revolving around the main character’s guilt concerning his own confusion in his role in the death of someone he loved deeply. And it’s beautifully written, though dark and gritty in its own, unique way, if we are merely to look at the opening passage:

I have been unhappy for many years now.

I have seen in the faces of young people soaring down the streets a resemblance to people who died during my childhood.

The period in my life of which I am about to tell involves a late night in the winter of 1989, when I was fifteen years old and a certain girl died in front of me. Her name was Rosemary Blackwell. It happened when she and I were living with a family in foster care, and though the details are complicated, I still think about her often. I’m alive and she’s dead. I should tell you this is not a confession, nor is it a way to untangle the roots and find meaning. Rosemary is dead. People live and die. People kill themselves or they get killed. The rest of us live on, burdened by what is inescapable.

The question then, is—why is Orange’s work seen as so singular? Why didn’t Hobson’s work find a home with a larger press? Why now, when it has been shortlisted for the National Book Awards, is it not in the minds of the literary-reading-public in the way Orange’s is? Though it’s arguable that There There is a superior book, that argument seems reductive, and not helpful. But what is helpful is looking at the history of Native American literature in this country, and the ways in which Hobson’s book bears a much stronger resemblance to what is produced by Indigenous writers in Canada.

As to the history, the article I wrote on Native American fiction a number of years ago is a helpful reference point. But to diverge into something more specific, one of the strangest parts of the puzzle when it comes to how Native American literature has been viewed in this country has to do with how each generation of writers was viewed. Circling back to what I call the Third Wave in Native fiction, and Susan Power, it’s more than a puzzle than ever why it is that the American Indian is seen—in life and in literature—as a reservation-bound subject—in the United States at least. Looking at an article from 1997 in the New York Times, it speaks to a new generation of writers who are writing about distinctly urban subject matter—including Susan Power, Greg Sarris, David Treuer—and Sherman Alexie:

But a new generation of Indian writers is emerging. Writers like Mr. Sarris, 44, who is part Pomo and Coastal Miwok, and Sherman Alexie, 30, a member of the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene tribe and the author of ‘’Indian Killer,’’ which gained wide critical attention when it was published last year, are beginning to rethink the Indian story in works that are increasingly hard edged and urban, distinctly individual and full of references to pop culture.

Putting aside Alexie’s more incendiary personal behavior for the moment, one of the reasons this particular article is so stunning is that it has to do with the fact that not only did Alexie become not just the dominating force—nearly completely—not long after this article was published, but he set his identity as a Native writer nearly solely on his rez (reservation) cred. In fact, much of the reason Orange’s work was such a revelation—for such a simple thing—was because Alexie had established Native authenticity strategically—and brilliantly—on his background. And, so, circling back to Alexie’s downfall, it set the perfect stage for another male Native writer to replace him, and quickly, with a different-but-same narrative of what is authentic to the Native experience, which is, to be clear, in no way Orange’s fault. What’s also disconcerting, and especially for a Native writer who is living in a time that looks to be a Native Renaissance for Native literature, is the fact that this article—from the New York Times no less—sets these authors apart from their predecessors and puts them in equal standing. Something, we know, that the literary world often doesn’t like to do, overall, when it comes to minority writers, and, especially, it seems, to Native writers.

Moving to Orange's There There, and speaking more directly to the lyrical essay that is broken up into the introduction, and interlude—we come to the book that seems to, at least at this point, not only define the Fifth Wave, but also to crystallize what it is that American audiences are looking for in a book by a Native author. The book has twelve distinct characters, each garnering incredibly short chapters that culminate in a shoot-out at a powwow. Though a shoot-out at a powwow sounds sharply high-concept, what defines this book— especially as literary fiction—isn’t the fiction at all, but the lyrical essay, a form that is in many ways, a long poem. And the essay in the book is a polished, pretty love-song not just about urban Indians—but about Indians in this country in general, and sharp, eye-catching points in American history that have to do with

Native Americans. Unlike really any book discussed here—or that I can think of—in Native letters, this book is in many ways, a post-modern, hybrid nonfiction/fiction novel—defined by its “telling” of American history. Though atypical in fiction, it does something that American audiences love, and which they loved about Alexie’s work, though he went about it differently: it teaches audiences something—in a pretty, but certainly overt way, about a series of cultures they know little about. In coming back to one of my earliest points, this circles back to the huge demographic difference between the United States and Canada. In Canada, there are reservations in cities. In Canada, even if there is racism—and ignorance surrounding Native people—folks, generally speaking, don’t want to be “told” or “taught”—they already, if inadequately, know about Indians. Or at least, they get that a good chunk of us survived.

Let’s look at three Canadian books of fiction, Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, The Break by Katherena Vermette, and Bad Endings by Carleigh Baker, that I feel epitomize this factor, and which make the analogy between Hobson’s work, and much Canadian work, clear.

Jonny Appleseed is a funny, lively, and wonderfully irreverent novel that, at first glance, certainly places a binary on rez life and urban Indian life. “When I first left the rez and moved to Winnipeg, I used Grindr and Rez Fox to find friends—with benefits of course. My apartment was full of whiteness—white lights, walls, ceiling, even toilet.” The main character is leaving the rez, and though he loves the city, financially, it’s a grind—and ultimately—he misses his friends and family. When his stepfather dies, he has to earn enough money to get back to the rez for the funeral—which reminds him of one of the reasons he’d left the rez in the first place, “Even in the 21st century, two brown boys can’t fall in love on the rez.…But it’s home because the bannock is still browning in the oven and your kokum is still making tea and eating Arrowroot biscuits.” However, as this quote—pulled directly from the review in The Globe and Mail—illustrates, there are reasons to leave the rez, but it’s not because he’s completely isolated from his culture in an urban setting. In fact, the main plot line of this novel—unique and important because of this rarity in Native letters—revolves around his love for his childhood friend, Tias—who also lives in Winnipeg. The novel doesn’t seem interested in teaching non-Natives a lesson in culture; it seems most interested in showing what it’s like for a queer kid from the rez to be in love with someone and not quite know what to do about it. What it does have in common with There There, is the fact that it normalizes the idea of urban Indians.

The Break, a beautiful, gritty novel that bears the most resemblance to There There, is a gripping literary police-procedural about an Indigenous girl who is raped. The narrative spirals inward-but-forward via ten characters (but mainly from the point of view of a Métis police officer) until we finally find out who the rapist is (which is a tragic, shocking reveal). Much like Orange’s, the novel is dominated by a plethora of voices—something, unlike Orange’s, that Vermette did receive some critique for. However, what matters is that this is almost an entirely urban novel—that mentions the reservation, but takes place in an urban setting. Nevertheless, the fact that it is urban seemed to gather next to nothing in terms of interest around the novel. The reviews, like the one cited above, circled around the story, the craft. Vermette’s portrayal of urban Indian life is treated like a fact. Something commonplace. Nothing revelatory. Because, in reality, it’s neither revelatory in Canada, nor in the United States.

The last book that more than clearly illustrates this difference in dynamic is Bad Endings by Carleigh Baker. A wonderfully icy wry collection of stories that, delightfully, feels little to no obligation to highlight not only the characters urban or rez-ness—but their Indigenousness at all. Only a handful of stories make the ethnic background of the characters clear, and when they do, it’s in the most irreverent way possible, something that were it present in fiction based in the United States, would be treated as nothing short of miraculous. In fact, I’m unclear if this collection would have found a home at all in this country without completely losing its Indigenousness—or over-emphasizing it. And what a loss.

Turning to the speculative, a mainly academic term that seems to cover everything from horror to science-fiction to fantasy, and simply means under the umbrella of literary-but-not-strictly-realism (a term that magical realism used to occupy) we come to a very different, but equally interesting set of parallels.

Rebecca Roanhorse, a speculative/urban fantasy author faced intense scrutiny when a short list of Diné (Navajo) writers (mainly poets) felt her work verging on cultural appropriation—and worse. Roanhorse herself is Pueblo—not Diné, like her characters, and her world, took place in Dinétah (or Navajo territory). Indeed, the trend has been for Native writers—in the United States and Canada, regardless of form or genre—to increasingly write about the Nations that they belong to, or are descended from. In many ways, this has to do with the movement generally, for folks from underrepresented communities to finally be allowed to represent themselves in the literature about them that is sent out into the world. In doing this, the literature supports the communities that it purports to represent, it pushes back on the mountain of literature by white folks that is often at best well-intentioned and at worst ignorant, stereotypical, and even at times racist—and it allows for a fuller portrait of American life in literature.

Ultimately, because of the history of ignoring underrepresented writers, and minority folks in general—when they’ve asked for control over their own narratives, many felt that if Diné writers—even if just a handful of mainly poets—were unhappy over a book about Diné people, that this critique should be paid attention to. This begs a larger issue, which is now that we (Natives) are beginning to have some control over how we are represented in literature—how should we deal with that control? Should writing be policed? Merely critiqued? Left to the individual artist? What does it mean, concretely and materially, in terms of the actual impact on our communities, when we represent ourselves in literature in ways that move out into the larger world? These are difficult questions, questions, ironically, that speculative fiction—especially in Indigenous communities—is uniquely able to handle.

Looking at Roanhorse’s Canadian—and United States—counterparts, one has to concede that her peers are generally writing about Nations they either belong to, or are descended from. Mainly. For example, in Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse, the primary characters certainly are Cherokee—but they’re also Osage, and white. In fact, whether the reviews pan or praise the first book in this series, there’s no mention of Wilson’s background—and rarely to the specific tribal Nation that he belongs to. Something, that must have helped him fly under radar during Alexie’s reign of dominance, as Wilson is the only Native author, whose career didn’t start prior to 2000, to publish with a major press.

And, as noted, much like Roanhorse’s, Wilson’s work has main characters from tribal backgrounds that aren’t his. But, in his case, there’s never been a single accusation of tribal appropriation. One could argue that this has to do with the fact that the reviews of his work rarely mention his background—or, because Wilson is from Oklahoma, a state boasting membership of over thirty-nine tribes. And it is important, as many Native scholars have pointed out, not just to look at the cultural particulars of the Nation that one is speaking about in whatever context, but to bear in mind the significant differences between them. In Oklahoma, it is common to be Native and live amongst Natives of multiple tribes—arguably a very good reason to include them in your creative work, if it is based in Oklahoma. However, not only is Roanhorse descended from a tribe that isn’t far from the Navajo Nation (a little over three hours from the border) but technically speaking, the Diné live on what once was Pueblo land, and the Diné and Pueblo have been in the same general space for a thousand years, resulting in conflict—but also biological and cultural exchange. Further, like many Native people, the traditional spirituality practiced by many Diné is Native American Church. A mix of Diné, Lakota, and Mexican Indian traditions.

Further, returning to There There, a novel that certainly, generally, features characters from the author’s own tribal background—but, like Roanhorse’s and Wilson’s—verges into chapters about tribes that Orange doesn’t belong to, there is the character titled Octavio Gomez. Though his nation isn’t named, when looking at the location that the character’s family is from (New Mexico) and googling the traditional origin story about a badger who named the sun, told in Gomez’s chapter, we can surmise that his Nation is Yaqui. In fact, if we move back to Where the Dead Sit Talking, we can see that one of Hobson’s main characters—though, unlike Orange and Roanhorse not a character from whose point of view the story is told, is Ponca, unlike Hobson.

However, much of the controversy around Roanhorse’s novels, seems to gather around the content—which a group of writers found unacceptable, and not in line with their interpretation of how Diné people should be represented on the page. Mainly, this had to do with her use of Diné spirituality—and mainly, that she addressed it at all, as a non-Diné person. However, Orange’s Gomez chapter is filled with all kinds of overt naming of spiritual Indigenous practices—something that was not only never of note for his work—but never an issue with Yaqui writers and/or people.

One can’t help but wonder, if historically, there has been critique of Native writers—by other Native writers, who spoke about their own Nation’s spirituality in their work, if this critique wouldn’t be coming for any Native writer who makes imaginative use of spirituality in their work. This is a fraught topic. Nearly every Native nation has been exposed at the least, to the miserable assimilation tactics of boarding schools, where Native children were often molested, beaten, overworked—and punished severely for speaking their languages or practicing their spirituality.

Additionally, modern exploitation of Native spirituality is rampant, and Native folks have every right to worry about the consumption of their culture in creative work.

However, the main concern seems to revolve around the imaginative part. And speaking to the fact that this can be viewed as exploitation, especially in the United States—versus Canada—is primarily because the general assumed audience for Native literature is non-Native. If we are to think about literature in terms of white writers from the United States alone, who don’t often think about their (implied white) audiences—there are countless instances of writers who not only speak to their spirituality in their work—but are highly critical of it—or deeply irreverent. And certainly imaginative. To be fair, the circumstances of white folks and Natives in this country are so divergent, as to make this comparison absurd. However, this is precisely the issue. How can Native writers write, with the same freedom as white writers, when the mirror we’re asked to look into, doesn’t reflect ourselves? And are Canadian Native writers able to write—as it seems is the case with issues of Native urbanity—with a more Native audience in mind?

Canadian Métis author Cherie Dimaline’s book The Marrow Thieves, went onto massive popularity both in Canada and in the United States. The dystopian world that she presents, utilizes an incredibly imaginative view of Métis culture—and at times, spirituality. Though not as overt as Roanhorse, in the sense that in Roanhorse’s world, old gods have come to life—there is mention of traditional, spiritual figures such as the wiindigo and the rougarou. Overall, too, there is, for lack of a better word, a mystical quality to the fact that in her world, the marrow of Native people is an almost magical commodity, and the only thing that allows non-Natives to (literally) dream as only Native people do now, in this world. “Dreams get caught in the webs woven in your bones. That’s where they live, in the marrow there.” For all of its grand differences, however, what it does, much like its urban and speculative contemporaries in Canada—and much like Roanhorse and Hobson in their work, is render the world in such a way that is organic. Though characters speak to identity, it’s woven quite naturally into the overall narrative—in fact, it’s really not separate at all—as if the author were imagining an audience not unlike the one in the mirror.

Similarly, Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Canadian Anishinaabe writer Waubgeshig Rice, tackles a post-apocalyptic world. Though not as deeply speculative—if you will, as Roanhorse’s or Dimaline’s, it’s a world that quite cleverly avoids the reasons why the small reservation community, where the book takes place, is living in a post-apocalyptic situation, and manages—again, like so many of its Canadian contemporaries, to render a deeply natural Native world. As one reviewer states, “His characters are ordinary Canadians who watch hockey or have an impressive DVD collection[s], while some of them still have knowledge about traditional ways, languages (Ojibwe is spoken in this book) and stories that make their lives fascinating—even though they are dealing with an unknown crisis that is a threat to all of these things.”

Lastly, as to Canadian Native writers, there is the unparalleled Eden Robinson. Though her earlier work wove subtle bits of her Haisla and Heiltsuk cultural spirituality in, her current much more speculative novels, starting with Son of a Trickster, take that to a much grander scale, with the main character learning that he’s inherited his mother’s power to see traditional creatures. Much like Roanhorse’s world, where the main character has “clan powers,” i.e traditional, inherited powers geared towards understanding—and beating, the more traditional evil gods or monsters in their respective worlds, Robinson’s world, in its usual humorous way, takes traditional spirituality—and organically, extends it into an imaginative narrative. It invites us into a world that wouldn’t quite exist anywhere else beyond these pages. And moving back once more to issues of rez-or-urbanity, this novel is set on a reservation—and moves at turns to off-the-rez locations, with recognition—but not fanfare.

Though it’s heartening to see more writers invited—and much more than in the past—to write about their own tribal backgrounds, it’s clear that this can never be a binary situation—not that this is an invite to add to the already glutted non-Natives writing “for” Natives markets. Much like the case for whether something is reservation or urban literature, there is no one way, and creating a hard-and-fast rule book is ultimately limiting. It also seems—to borrow a phrase from current Native academia, deeply anti-settler colonialist, to write speculatively—a genre which puts Native people into the future, when we were, at least in the United States—imagined as part of its distant past. And though there will always be the fear that using our spirituality in our work might aid in our exploitation, it seems that those of us writing in the United States might see it the way that (only some, admittedly) Canadian Native writers see this—as nothing more than a resistance to the idea that we are writing solely for a white audience that can only see us if we are fetishized.

It’s also arguable that in the case of Roanhorse’s work, it verges much more widely into commercial, genre-driven work (not a bad thing, per se)—and the reaction is tied into a very tight, very literary community that has based its audience on a very specific set of aesthetics for a long, long time. Additionally, it’s worth bearing our particular history in mind, when it comes to the reaction to our work, internally. Years ago, while attending a screening for a Native film, I witnessed an older Native man standing up afterwards, and telling the writer, in a question and answer section, that her display of traditional spirituality on the screen was wrong—not incorrect—but morally wrong. She listened respectfully and then told him that she’d run absolutely every detail past her elders, down to how to dispose of the materials she’d used. After, privately—out of respect for the man, she shared that she felt that because of the legacy of our boarding and day schools, she felt that the man was reacting negatively to a positive display of traditional spirituality—because respect for our own traditions, had been quite literally beaten out of his, and our, ancestors. There is something to that argument—especially when you look at Roanhorse’s work—which is such a exuberant, positive—and deeply imaginative exploration of Diné culture. One of the seminal scenes, in this regard, is in her second book Storm of Locusts. A young medicine man, Kai, has had to kill a Diné man who meant to harm the Navajo Nation. But before he does, he gives him something. “‘I told him his clans. Who his parents were. I told him he was loved.” This is next to meaningless for a non-Native audience. But for a Native audience, and certainly a Diné audience, it is revolutionary. For the great majority of Native people, our kinship ties to each other are broken down into a series of things—often, and again certainly for the Diné, into clans. The statement, by Roanhorse, in this moment, is to say that without knowing who they are—deeply, Native people are not only lost, but destructive. Roanhorse has taken a fundamental tenet of most—if not all—Native thinking, and made it available—and positive—to young and old Diné (and other Natives). If that’s not revolutionary, I don’t know what is.

It also seems, that as Fourth Wave, speculative author Blake M. Housman (a Cherokee citizen) explained, that when he’d come to write a novel, all of his literary elders had told him that he needed to consult his elders, and that if they did not want him to write about something, he shouldn’t. He said he thought long and hard about this, but that eventually, he came to a point where this idea made him uncomfortable. That it was too close—even when he considered the great damages that had been done to Native people, and specifically his in Hausman’s case, and the grand difference between white and Native writers, to state-sanctioned literature, and that he was going to rely on his own gut, and his own imagination to guide him.

There is so much to celebrate, so much that is groundbreaking—across two countries, and across genres. Hobson’s work is dark and lyrical, and though it seems to bear only the most superficial aesthetic and conceptual conceits in common with Roanhorse’s novels, ultimately, it does the same thing: it shows us a world that Natives occupy without inorganically and inelegantly hammering away at an agenda. There There has broken through to the larger non-Native population in the United States in a way that is unprecedented, to urban Indians, with its semi-experimental lyrical-essay sections. Cherokee citizen Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalyse, and other novels, are brilliantly-crafted science-fiction books that have gone oddly under the Indian-academic radar, and whose work often speaks to what technology might mean for our world in the not-too-distant future. Cherokee citizen Kelli Jo Ford’s collection of short stories, Crooked Hallelujah, published in 2020, is set to be the collection taught in colleges and universities for decades. Diné author Natanya Ann Pulley’s post-modern/experimental collection With Teeth is breaking ground with a chorus of female voices, and Pulley’s characteristic highly surreal landscape. Rosebud (Lakota) citizen David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s novel, Winter Counts, groundbreaking in its tough-but-beautifully written story about a Native vigilante, was also published in 2020, and has been nominated for an Edgar. If he wins, this will make him the first Native American to do so. Marcie Rendon (Anishinaabe) is also writing in the crime genre, with her searing novel, Murder on the Red River. There is the prolific Blackfeet writer, Stephen Graham Jones’s All the Good Indians, a dark, literary-horror novel that seems set to push Indian horror as a genre, right in the mainstream for the first time. Additionally, we have Margaret Verble, a Cherokee citizen and a Pulitzer Press finalist, with her sweeping historical narratives with Cherokee America and Maud’s Line., And lastly, Anishinaabe author Angeline Boulley’s The Firekeepers Daughter. Boulley’s two-book deal is reportedly the largest for a Native (for a debut) in history—and will clearly engage an immense audience, with its story about a girl using her culture—and science skills—to solve crimes on her reservation (pushing the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women to the cultural fore).

Increasingly, as noted—even when viewed as problematic by some, Native writers in the United States are writing us into the future, and paying imaginative respect to our past. Like their contemporaries in Canada, they’re throwing away the binaries which have bound them. For example, Stephen Graham Jones’s latest horror novel takes a much more ambiguous, deeply imaginative idea of what might be construed as Native spirituality (an Elk that lives on land that can only be hunted by elders—who, when it is killed, comes back to haunt—and hunt —those who killed it). And in his own words, “…no, this isn’t from any old-time Blackfeet story. It’s really just my version of Jason Voorhees.” There must come a point when we are allowed to utilize the full spectrum of our realties, our pasts and our presents—our urban and rez and every-in-between landscapes, our gritty realism and imagined worlds—and put them onto the page in way that is as free as our white contemporaries, but with our own, unique twist. Certainly, we have to think about the impact on our communities. However, those terms should be concrete if they are to matter. I think I see that world coming. Maybe in a dream. Maybe in the Fifth Wave.

---

Erika T. Wurth, an Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee, is the author of two novels, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend and You Who Enter Here, two collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and she has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has been chosen as a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation

---

Notes