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.
expect it to be, for both Rayona and Dorris. Louise Erdrich perhaps explains this concept best in the opening stanza of her poem "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways" from her collection, Jacklight: Home's the place we head for in our sleep. Boxcars stumbling north in dreams don't wait for us. We catch them on the run, The rails, old lacerations that we love, shoot parallel across the face and break just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars you can't get lost. Home is the place they cross. (11) All of the scars in Yellow Raft ultimately point toward home, toward family, toward the undeniably complexity of human existence — any human existence. "Riding scars you can't get lost." "Baudelaire said Tve seen everything twice,' " adds Broyard, "and most of us see it more often than that —but it looks different each time" (7). By telling, and retelling, and yet again retelling each life story —in a sense doing narrative braiding —Dorris forces us to see the richness of meaning behind the scars of the lives of these women, rather than the scars themselves. We see three human beings rather than a native American community. In effect, then, Dorris uses recognizable stereotypes about native American culture as a way to destroy those stereotypes. "Riding scars you can't get lost. Home is the place they cross." Anything else simply leads into the void of cultural simplification which we have all come to expect concerning native Americans. Are we then faced with a "compassionate novel, or a lyrical one" asks Broyard. "These fears are mentioned," he answers, "merely to be dismissed. The only thing that isn't first-rate about A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is its title, which misleads you about what kind of book it is" (7). Unfortunately, the title may have done just that: misled European reviewers of the novel. London's Contemporary Review, signals the basic problem. "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" the unsigned review states, "is long, slow, detailed and very American in style and concept. It may open up a new world to readers not familiar with life among 29
