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The author of Solar Storms is not Hulk Hogan’s wife. Solar Storms. Chickasaw --Oklahoma.
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“Barbara J. Cook has suggested that in Solar Storms, Hogan purposely omits the name of the tribe to which the characters belong in order to avoid this expectation of translation (43) because, as Hogan has said in an interview, she ‘is fictionalizing the tribes I'm writing about so nobody feels like they're being invaded once again’ (qtd. in Cook 43).”
Discussion ?s--important motifs--significance of maps--food--dualities--AIM--memory (and maps!)--mirrors--religion--Native American/American Indian novel--ecocriticism--the body/scarring--fear--setting driven novel?
“The late 1960s and early '70s witnessed a publishing explosion for Native American studies…The acceptance of Native American literature as literature, and not as ethnography or anthropology, was a crucial move in this formative stage…Owens's comment about the ‘thoroughly 'Indian' story and discourse’ of House Made of Dawn touches upon one of the most fiercely contested issues in Native American literary studies today: what makes a book, a poem, a story, an author ‘authentic’ or ‘native’? A number of writers have protested the assumption that native literature must be about ‘braids, beads, and buckskin’ (Owens, Mixedblood 13) or ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Father Sky’ (Alexie 13) to be considered ‘native.’ In fact, Sherman Alexie, responding to this issue, in a less-than-generous moment declared to an interviewer, ‘We've been stuck in place since House Made of Dawn’ (9).”
“Ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that has developed over the past twenty years in response to growing academic concern about the responses of literature and literary theory to the global crisis of environmental degradation. Both ethically and practically, ecocriticism decenters humanity's importance in nonhuman nature and nature writing…and instead explores the complex interrelationships between the human and the nonhuman (a biocentric view). Despite this deemphasis on humanity's place within the world, ecocriticism does not ignore ethical or practical concerns for human readers. Analogous to the decentering of patriarchal assumptions and values enacted by feminist theory and practice, ecocriticism's biocentrism instead allows writers and critics to explore the interconnectedness of all nature, human and nonhuman, rather than merely looking at nonhuman nature as setting and/or metaphor for the human condition. As Cheryll Burgess-Glotfelty explains, ‘ecocritics ask questions like 'How does literature function within the ecosystem?' or 'How does a given textual representation affect the way we treat actual nature?’" (2).
“Ecofeminism (ecological feminism) is a philosophy that draws a connection between the domination of sexual, ethnic and social minorities, and the domination of nonhuman nature.”
“[Ecofem scholar Ynestra] King emphasizes that the main goals of ecofeminism, ‘human liberation and the liberation of nature are inextricably connected, as are the ecological and the social crisis’ (730).”
American Indian and First Nations texts like Hogan’s lend themselves perfectly to this kind of reading (see “Fighting for the Mother/Land An Ecofeminist Reading of Linda Hogan's Solar Storms” by Silvia Schultermandl.
“When ecofeminist critic Mary Daly asserts that ‘everything is connected’ (11), she does so with the implication that racism, sexism, and ecological domination are products of the same hierarchical structures within society.”
“[Through the course of the novel Angel is] Reestablishing the initial bonds within her cultural, geo-political, and spiritual world…”
“In this sense, Solar Storms treats matrilineage as gynocratic principle of cultural resistance against Western domination of Native American tribes and lands. As Paula Gunn Allen argues in The Sacred Hoop (1986), ‘physical and cultural genocide ofAmerican Indian tribes is and was mostly about patriarchal fear of gynocracy’ (3). In the gynocratic society of Solar Storms, the individual members cherish their bonds with each other and their bonds with the animals, plants, and natural elements around them equally. This depiction of a female, environmentalist society emphasizes the importance of inter-female relationships for the preservation of the ancestral culture. Women in Hogan's writing are not better equipped to assume environmental responsibility, they ‘simply are the leaders in the community, and the connections that count . . . are those between women’ (Tarter 143-44). In Solar Storms, Hogan interconnects Angel's environmentalist concern with her fight for the continuity of her matrilineal heritage.”
This helps to understand how important it was for Angel to reconnect with her mother, how forgiving she is. “In her ability to look at her mother beyond the normative ideals of motherhood/ womanhood imposed by a patriarchal society, Angel liberates herself from the Euro-American society.”
“Writing Deeper Maps: Mapmaking, Local Indigenous Knowledges, and Literary Nationalism in Native Women’s Writing” by Kelli Lyon Johnson,Studies in American Indian Literatures
“European maps have long been taken as transparent, scientific, objective, and universal--as if they were merely precise representations of actual space in the world.”
“As many Native nations assert their inherent sovereignty, they insist on controlling their own territory and thus seek to map it through the use of their own nation-specific conventions.”
“A full understanding of Native maps relies not on a European understanding of scientific geography but of the context--and the narrative--that accompanied each Native-made map.”
Cocoons: "we are cocoons who consume our own bodies and at death we fly away transformed and beautiful" (89).
Discussion ?s--important motifs--significance of maps--food--dualities--memory (and maps!)--mirrors--religion--the body/scarring--fear--setting driven novel?
