Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen is a Native American poet, literary critic, activist and novelist. Born in 1939, Allen grew up at Laguna Pueblo. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux and Lebanese-American descent, Allen has always most closely identified with the people among whom she spent her childhood and upbringing.

Having obtained a BA and MFA from the University of Oregon, Allen gained her PhD at the University of New Mexico, where she taught and where she began her research into various tribal religions.

Anthropological writings and literary criticism

Allen's studies would eventually result in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, a controversial text which argues that the accounts of Native beliefs and traditions were subverted by phallogocentric European explorers and colonisers, who downplayed or erased the central role that woman played in most Native societies. Allen argued that many Native tribes were "gynocratic", with women taking the principal decisions, while others believed in absolute balance between male and female, with neither side gaining dominance.

Allen's arguments and research have been much criticised in the years following publication of The Sacred Hoop. Gerald Vizenor and others have accused her of a simple reversal of essentialism, while historians and anthropologists have disproved or questioned some of her scholarship. However, her book and subsequent work has also proved hugely influential, provoking an outpouring of feminist studies of Native cultures and literature. It remains a set text on many Native American Studies programmes.

Allen has also written many essays of literary criticism. These often stress the sacredness of Native religions, attempting to ensure that these are treated as religions rather than being patronised as "folklore" or "myths".

Creative writing

Allen is well-known as a novelist, poet and short story writer. Her work, like that of fellow Laguna writer Leslie Marmon Silko, draws heavily on the Pueblo tales of Grandmother Spider and the Corn Maidens, and is noted for a strongly political streak.

As a novelist, she is probably best-known for her novel The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, a story of Ephanie, a mixed-blood like Allen herself, and her struggle to express herself creatively. As a poet, her most successful collection so far is probably Life Is a Fatal Disease : Collected Poems 1962-1995.

Allen has also been responsible for a number of collections of Native American writings, including Spider Womans Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women.

Allen's work has been categorised as belonging to the Native American Renaissance, though she herself has rejected the label.

Awards

Allen has been awarded an "American Book Award" by the Before Columbus Foundation, the Native American Prize for Literature, the Susan Koppelman Award, and in 2001 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Woman Who Owned The Shadows (1983) – ISBN 0933216076

Poetry

• Life is a fatal disease : collected poems 1962-1995 (1997) - ISBN 0931122856
• Skins and bones : poems 1979-1987 (1988) - ISBN 0931122503
• Shadow Country (1982)
• A Cannon Between My Knees (1981)

Academic

• Off the reservation : reflections on boundary-busting border-crossing loose canons (1998)
• Grandmothers of the light : a medicine women's sourcebook (1991)
• The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986)
• Studies in American Indian literature : critical essays and course designs (1983)

Biography

• As long as the rivers flow : the stories of nine Native Americans (1996)

Edited Collections and Anthologies

• Dunn, Carolyn. Hozho: walking in beauty : short stories by American Indian writers (2001)
• Song of the turtle : American Indian literature, 1974-1994 (1996)
• Voice of the turtle : American Indian literature 1900-1970 (1994)
• Spider Woman's granddaughters : traditional tales and contemporary writing by Native American women (1989)