Classics Challenge 2021

So I'm finally ready to start the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021, even though we're already two months into the year. Hey, I can read fast! My theme this year is going to be American Indians, both as authors and as subjects. I wanted to do something more like I did last year, when I focused strongly on Black authors, but I have had some trouble planning the list.

Similar to Black authors, Native American authors' voices have been suppressed throughout U.S. history. But it's more complicated than that. Indigenous people had and still have their own languages and cultures. And of course, for a long time white immigrants were afraid of Indians and were engaged in trying to wipe them out, not publish them. Once white people began to get over their fear, they turned Indians into romantic symbols of a bygone age, ignoring the fact that real live members of many different tribes were living all around them. Over the last 50 years there has been what is sometimes referred to as a Native American Renaissance (something like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s), but most of the books that have come out of that don't count for the Classics Challenge, which requires that books be at least 50 years old.

My list includes a few books by white people about American Indians. In fact, the list was originally about half white, but I've found more interesting Indian authors as I've gone along. So now about three quarters of my authors are Indigenous, and of course the list may change. Like last year, I am planning to read the books in the order they were written, so the category numbers are all mixed up.

1800s

7. New-to-Me Classic by a Favorite Author: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (white), 1826. He's not exactly a favorite, but I was mildly entertained by one of his books last year and I've never read anything by any of these other authors. This is an important early work for its fairly positive portrayal of Native Americans.

 

11. Travel or Adventure Classic: The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta by John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee), 1854. Considered the first novel in English written by a Native American, it's about a Mexican immigrant in California, not a Cherokee.

4. Classic in Translation: Winnetou: The Treasure of Nugget Mountain by Karl May (German), 1893 (trans. 1898). The Winnetou books I-IV made American Indians famous in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. What I'm going to read is apparently the first American translation (of books II and III), substantially altered by the translator.

 

1. 19th Century Classic: Ogimawkwe Mitigwaki (Queen of the Woods) by Simon Pokagon (Pokagon band of Potawatomi), 1899. Considered the second novel in English written by a Native American.

1900s

3. Classic by a Woman Author: Cogewea, the Half-Blood by Mourning Dove (Okanogan, Colville), written 1912, published 1927. A "western romance," possibly the second novel in English by a Native American woman.  

10. Humorous or Satirical Classic: The Illiterate Digest by Will Rogers (Cherokee), 1924. Not a novel, but an early collection of writings by well-known humorist (actor, journalist) Rogers. 

12. Classic Play: The Cherokee Night by Lynn Riggs (Cherokee), 1932. By the playwright who also wrote Green Grow the Lilacs, which became Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
 

6. Classic by a New-to-Me Author: Brothers Three by John Milton Oskison (Cherokee), 1935. Almost every writer on this list is new to me, so it was just a matter of deciding which book to use for this category. The third novel by Stanford University's first Native American graduate. (I had to buy it from an antiquarian book dealer, so am still waiting for it to show up.)

8. Classic about an Animal or with an Animal in the Title: The Man Who Killed the Deer by Frank Waters (Cheyenne), 1942. Part Cheyenne on his father's side, Waters was born in Colorado and wrote about Pueblo Indians such as the Hopi, not his own people.

2. 20th Century Classic: Waterlily by Ella Cara Deloria (Yankton Dakota), 1947 but published posthumously in 1988. Deloria was not only a fiction writer, she was -- like Zora Neale Hurston from my list last year -- an anthropologist who worked with Franz Boas.

9. Children's Classic: Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith (white), 1957. I already own this (bought it last year because it's about the Civil War) but there are other possibilities, such as Runner in the Sun by D'Arcy McNickle (Salish Kootenai). Also, Mari Sandoz (white) wrote a couple of children's novels about Indians. So this choice may change.

5. Classic by a BIPOC author: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), 1968. Won the Pulitzer Prize and launched the Native American Renaissance.

I only have two female authors on my list so far, which makes me unhappy. But I'm glad I realized that I could include the book by Ella Cara Deloria, which was published after her death and became an instant classic.

Last year's list seemed prophetic, with the explosion of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer. I don't expect this year's list to be similarly apropos. It's just that after immersing myself in early Black American literature I found myself wanting to do the same with another "historically marginalized" (persecuted, decimated) group. Basically, I wondered what came before Louise Erdrich, whose books I enjoy. Her first novel, Love Medicine, was published in 1984, 16 years after N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn. So maybe I'm asking what came before Momaday. I'm very interested to read the books on this list. I hope I learn a lot.