Paula Gunn Allen. Elizabeth I. Hanson. Western Writers Series, Number 96.

Boise: Boise State

University, 1990. ISBN 0-88430-095-1.
It is surprising that the work of Paula Gunn Allen, often quoted and always referred to in recent
studies on American Indian literature, hasn't received more critical attention. There are articles
on aspects of her work and interviews with her available, but, to my knowledge, there is no
book-length study of Allen yet. Elizabeth Hanson's short study of Paula Gunn Allen is the first
attempt then to pull the disjointed material together and to offer important personal data and
background material that the reader of her work would find difficult to obtain.
Hanson's division of her material into sections--"Short Biography," "Literary Criticism," "The
Early Poetry," "Feminist Poetry," Shadow Country," "The Woman Who Owned the Shadows,"
and "Concluion" --provides easy assess to specific information. Particularly useful are the
sections on poetry, since readers are most likely familiar with individual poems from anthologies
of American Indian poetry and literature. These encounters with single poems do not facilitate
the reader's recognition of metaphors and themes that run through Allen's poetry. Hanson's
discussion of the body of Allen's poetry in the sections "The Early Poetry," "Feminist Poetry"
and "Shadow Country" makes that information accessible and provides a reading, by necessity
partial and fragmented, of key poems. While Allen's poetry is available it is difficult to obtain a
copy of her one novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows (1983); here Hanson provides a
short summary of the novel, a short reading of the same and attempts to place it within the
context of her other work. It is unfortunate that Hanson does not {87} refer the reader to Allen's
own reading of her novel in The Sacred Hoop (1986) which would add an additional, and very
interesting, dimension to Hanson's reading of the novel.
In Paula Gunn Allen Hanson experiences the same problems as other writers of the Western
Writers series whose subjects were prolific and important contributors to literature; it is
impossible to do justice to the amazing scope of Allen's work as a critic, poet, novelist, and
academic in the prescribed number of pages. Hanson attempts to solve that problem by imposing
a frame on Allen's work, the "breed persona." In the first paragraph of her study Hanson states:
"To stand outside, to be and yet not to be, becomes, at least in Allen's case, a source of subtle
self-exploration as well as extraordinary art" (5). This theme, the mediator between cultures, runs
through the entire study, and everything is subjected to it. While the problem of the breed is a
theme that occurs in much of contemporary American Indian literature, it cannot replace other
themes that are just as important, e.g., the sense of place. The reader finishes the study with the
sense that Allen is excluded from the American Indian part of her heritage because of her status
as a "breed," has no part in the "racial memory" as N. Scott Momaday called it in his essay "The
Man Made of Words." In The Sacred Hoop, however, Allen regards herself clearly as part of the
American Indian community that used to be a gynocracy before the advent of the whites. In an
interview with Joseph Bruchac in Survival This Way (1987) she also speaks of other themes,
themes that are as important to her as the one Hanson chooses to emphasize: ". . . it [House
Made of Dawn] brought my land back to me. . . . Part of what I was going through was land
sickness--loss of land" (11; her emphasis). Forcing Allen's work into the framework "breed"
denies its richness and accords one theme an importance that Allen herself does not give it. As
the Introduction to The Sacred Hoop shows, she considers herself a participant in a number of
communities, not merely a mediator between the white and American Indian communities.

The space restrictions also lead to sweeping generalizations that do a disservice to the literary
criticism of American Indian literature. In "Literary Criticism," for example, Hanson deals
primarily with Allen's two book-length studies of American Indian literature, Studies in
American Indian Literature (1983) and The Sacred Hoop. There can be no doubt that Studies is
as important a contribution to the field and as valuable to those who teach American Indian
literature as Hanson claims. Hanson's discussion of Studies implies, however, that the collection
of critical essays and course designs edited by Allen provides the reader with an exclusive
American Indian viewpoint on the study of American Indian literature and seems to deny the
validity of white criticism. A great number, perhaps the majority, of contributions come from
white scholars in the field, e.g., Larry Evers and A. LaVonne Ruoff. The work of these white
critics has shown that sensitivity to cultural differences and the knowledge of history,
anthropology, etc.,{88} that, according to Hanson, Allen demands of critics. Only those familiar
with Studies know that the contributors are mostly white critics. The reader of Paula Gunn Allen
feels encouraged to dismiss all white criticism, instead of developing a sensitivity of his own that
permits him to judge literary works and their criticism by their merits.
Elizabeth Hanson manages in her study to give the reader a sense of Paula Gunn Allen's wide
range of achievements as critic, poet and novelist. Hopefully, her study will serve as an incentive
for others to write the full-length study of her work or the bio-critical study her work deserves.
Meanwhile, Hanson's Paula Gunn Allen provides the reader with some very necessary general
information and a first glimpse of the person Paula Gunn Allen.
Birgit Hans