Only Approved Indians: Stories (Volume 12) (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series)

In these short stories, Jack D. Forbes captures the remarkable breadth and variety of American Indian life. Drawing on his skills as scholar and native activist, and, above all, as artist, Forbes enlarges our sense of how American Indians experience themselves and the world around them. Though all the main characters are of Indian descent, each is a unique combination of tribal origin, social status, age, and life-style - from native elder and college professor to lesbian barmaid and Chicano adolescent. Nevertheless the U.S. government (and perhaps white society as a whole) narrows the definition of Indian. In the title story, for example, two basketball teams begin fighting when one accuses the other of lacking BIA status - government recognition. When tournament officials disqualify the team that lacks official Indian players, the approved team celebrates its victory. Forbes's characters want to be unique, but they must struggle for this right, and they must endure pain. Forbes shows how such quests can have personal and political motives and can meet with success or failure and how those who search for individual identity must reckon with the identity of their group. Thus, in retelling the story of the Seminole War, Injun Joe casts the Indians, not the whites, as victors. He cannot rewrite history, but by recreating it he can come to terms with a painful legacy. Imagination is equally important to other characters: even when they cannot achieve change, they can envision it. Forbes's stories open our eyes to the injustices of this world and provide transcendent visions of the world as it might be. Publishers Weekly In this 12th volume of the publisher's American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series, Native American scholar Forbes turns from anthropology to anthology with 17 short stories about the vicissitudes of life for modern-day Indians. Many of the selections display a strong sense of irony and humor: in the title piece, for example, an Indian basketball team makes it to a championship only to be disqualified because their members aren't recognized as natives by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In ``An Incident in a Tour Among the Natives,'' a Native author receives romantic advances from a woman eager to be ravished by a red savage. Fantasy, too, plays a part in these lives, as in the particularly intriguing ``The Cage,'' in which the last full-blooded male Indian is put in a zoo. The tales portray pain like that of the boy who, losing himself to drink, dreams only of ``Someone to Love''; and they portray triumph, as in ``A City Indian Goes to School,'' in which a troubled teen turns his back on alcoholism and delinquency when he recovers his racial identity. Though occasionally heavy-handed, these diverse stories nonetheless reflect a unique style and a thoughtful perspective on a struggling nation. (Mar.) Seventeen short stories on life as an Indian in today's America. In An Incident in a Tour Among the Natives, an Indian writer is coveted by a white woman seeking a sexual experience with a savage, while in A City Indian Goes to School, an Indian teenager succeeds in overcoming alcoholism