Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)
STUDIES - Bruce J. Degi: Braiding the New Native American Narrative: Michael Dorrié Yellow Raft in Blue Water.
winning House Made Of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday in 1966, native Americans have found a growing audience for their prose works in twentieth century America. But as important as those works are, it is only recently that Native American fiction is reflecting a genuine change in, as Deloria puts it, the "manner in which Indians live" in the United States. And perhaps the most powerful example of that new direction in native American artistic expression is A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris. The power that drives this beautiful and moving novel is its insistence on destroying any possible simple understanding of the central characters through a beautifully realized narrative technique that forces the reader backward in time, continuously surprising and de-centering the reader by forcing a complex revaluation of and change in attitude toward the three generations of female characters. This novel is a clear indication of one specific cultural change within the native American community itself — seeing and accepting the complexity of defining contemporary Indian life —and thus serves as a significant step in changing attitudes toward native Americans by the rest of us. Without becoming mired in a "chicken and egg" debate —in other words, does the novel —as art —actually mirror changes in society — life —or is it vice versa? —we need simply accept the fact that a significant change in American social history is happening, and that a long awaited "cultural renewal" may now be rushing "into the vacuum created by the new ways of doing things" as the novel suggests. "This is not a story of communities or an attempt at a multifaceted understanding of the web of relationships inevitable in communities," suggests an unsigned review of the novel in Western American Literature, "instead Dorris narrows his perspective to three generations of women in a single, agonizingly fragmented family" (55). It is, of course, even more fitting then that this tightly focused novel of inter-twined family relationships should be produced by a reallife literary family, a literary marriage, as Michael Dorris (who is a member of the Modoc tribe) and his wife Louise Erdrich (who is part Ojibwa —Chippewa) collaborate extensively on all of the fiction they 24
