Publication Date

5-2023

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Cillian Knoll, Fabian Alvarez, Wes Berry

Degree Program

Department of English

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

This thesis argues how Native American writing and storytelling, through the specific framework of looking at queer narratives and representations, serves to break the binaries of Indigenous narratives and experiences as either tragic or resilient, while working to fight against Indigenous American erasure. Within these binaries, this thesis conceptualizes how queer narratives in Native American writing break their own binary but resisting against the gender expectations placed on them by Western society. By examining literature by Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko, coupled with other Native scholars and writers, this thesis illustrates the destructive concept of labeling Native culture, customs, and gender fluidity as relics of the past and how the examined works serve to bring Native lives and narratives back into the present.

To push back against confining Native experiences to the past, this thesis maintains that Native American literature and the queer narratives within them serve as future-oriented texts by showing characters and narratives that look ahead, rather than in the past. By looking at these texts, and the characters, bodies, and experiences in them, this thesis contends that viewing Native American writing as forward-looking moves us beyond the expectation of their narratives to stay in the past and work towards a more communal way to celebrate and amplify their voices as ones that will continue to exist and resist erasure.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Indigenous Studies | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Native American Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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