Post #4

Of the books that we have read so far in this class, I feel that A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is my favorite so far. While Smoke Dancing skipped between points of view on a chapter-by-chapter basis and Almanac of the Dead skips between characters and time periods every few pages (it seems), A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is by far the most accessible to me. Though each of the three major sections does follow a different character, while following a linear regression in time, it is still significantly easier to follow than the other two books. After reading these three books it is clear now that discontinuity of both time and character is characteristic of American Indian literature. The issue of time makes sense, given the Indian construction of time. (Although I should make an aside here to say that I am still not entirely clear how the concept of time is constructed in an Indian cultural setting. I know it’s not exactly a linear construction, but I am not sure whether it is conceived of as cyclical, just a big wobbly ball of time, or something else entirely.) I don’t, however, understand the cultural precedent for jumping between characters as opposed to following one main character. Does it perhaps relate to the Indian tradition of transmitting history through oral storytelling? When telling a story orally, does the storyteller traditionally impersonate the characters in the story, or am I completely off-track with that hypothesis? To return to A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, I actually particularly enjoy the way it’s constructed, beginning with Rayona’s story, then following the story back to her mother Christine, and her grandmother Ida. Even though it is not linear in a forward-progressing direction, the fact that it’s linear at all makes it easier to follow.