The Sun Is Not Merciful: Short Stories - Softcover

Walters, Anna Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932379109 ISBN 13: 9780932379108

Publisher: Firebrand Books, 1985

Synopsis

A collection of stories about contemporary tribal life.

About this title

Review

Recipient of two literary prizes (the Virginia McCormick Scully Award and the 1985 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation) The Sun Is Not Merciful is Pawnee/ Otoe writer Anna Lee Walter's first collection of short fiction. In each of these eight stories contemporary American Indians are constrained or distorted by the force field of Anglo culture, and in each story, Native values endure and transcend. Living entirely alone or as solitary couples (husband/ wife, grandmother/ granddaughter, sister/sister, mother/ daughter) characters move doggedly toward their individual visions of beauty and harmony. An old uncle, degenerated into alcholism and vagrancy, entrusts his vision of beauty to his neices, who are able to carry on. An epileptic pariah and his loving housemaid-turned-wife cultivate a nurturing silence until death interrupts; dogs agitated at graveside save the accidentally buried old man so that he can instruct: "There is no death. There is only a change of worlds." A mother, unable to save her daughter from the advances of an Anglo child molester, retreats with her child into solitude and denial, the only mechanisms cffective against the White Man. For all their geographical isolation the characters are part of a powerful tribal matrix, and acquire their punishments and rewards from it. Anglo religion, multidenominational and hierarchical, is powerless to save Lena's granddaughter from the devil, but tribal unity and belief protect the girl. Sonny breaks Anglo law and tribal law but only tribal law has real meaning; it has the power not only to punish but to forgive. And two old women, poaching fish on their family's land turned now into a recreation/ hydroelectric project, break Anglo law in order to keep their own. Epitomizing nonviolent resistance, they are quite aware that the white park ranger has none of the power he thinks he has to punish or forgive. Presumably, neither does any AngJo. Although this collection offers characters, plots, scenes, and image patterns consistent with European narrative tradition, it holds back on the urge to make the White Man understand the Indian at any cost. It permits a view, but no particular entry. Free of polemics, it finally dazzles by aloof austerity. "Don't fight the sun," says one old man. "It's going to whip you down if you fight it. Let it be. " -- From Independent Publisher

From Library Journal

The eight simple, moving tales collected here portray contemporary Native American life. The stark reality of a contemporary insular society is skillfully blended with the centuries-old culture that is a backdrop for the stories told by Walters's memorable people. "The Resurrection of John Stink" tells of an apparently epileptic man who's tended by 19-year-old Effie, who falls in love with him. After a seizure, John Stink stops breathing, and the white doctor Effie's fetched declares him dead. But when he's buried in a mound, his dogs won't leave him, so Effie digs him outaliveand he lives to be a very old man. At times, the narrative tends towards self-consciousness in its replication of a rich oral tradition, but this is a clear ethnic voice that deserves a wide audience. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Firebrand Books
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0932379109
• ISBN 13: 9780932379108
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 133