A Great Plains Reader
Book: A Great Plains Reader , by Diane D. Quantic (Editor), P. Jane Hafen, P. Jane Hafen, ISBN10: 0803288530, ISBN13: 9780803288539, University of Nebraska Press, July 2003, Paperback
Diane D. Quantic is an associate professor of English and the coordinator of Great Plains studies at Wichita State University. She is the author of The Nature of the Place: A Study of Great Plains Fiction (Nebraska 1995). P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo) is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the editor of Zitkala-Sa’s Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and "The Sun Dance Opera" (Nebraska 2001).
The Great Plains are as rich and integral a part of American literature as they are of the North American landscape. In this volume the stories, poems, and essays that have described, celebrated, and defined the region evoke the world of the American prairie from the first recorded days of Native history to the realities of life on a present-day reservation, from the arrival of European explorers to the experience of early settlers, from the splendor of the vast and rolling grasslands to the devastation of the Dust Bowl. Several essays look to the future and explore changes that would embolden the people of the Plains to continue to call home this place they have learned to value in spite of its persistent challenges. The infinite variety of the Great Plains landscape and its people unfolds in works by writers as diverse as Willa Cather, Loren Eiseley, Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe), Diane Glancy (Cherokee), Langston Hughes, Wes Jackson, Garrison Keillor, William Least Heat-Moon, Kathleen Norris, Wright Morris, Francis Parkman, O. E. Rölvaag, Mari Sandoz, William Stafford, Mark Twain, Douglas Unger, James Welch (Blackfeet), and Canadians Sharon Butala and Sinclair Ross. From tribal histories to the impressions of travelers today, from tales of isolation and nature’s furious storms to accounts of efforts to build communities, from flights of fancy to nuanced observations of the ecology of the grasslands, this comprehensive volume provides a history of the intricate relationships of land and people in the Great Plains.
Library Journal
This is an eclectic mix of stories, poems, and essays that explore the rich texture of the Great Plains landscape and people. The literary selections, chosen by editors Quantic (English & Great Plains studies, Wichita State Univ.) and Hafen (English, Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas), are divided into five sections-"The Lay of the Land," "Natives and Newcomers on the Great Plains," "Arriving and Settling In," "Adapting to a New Country," and "The Great Plains Community"-and represent authors such as William Stafford, N. Scott Momaday, Kathleen Norris, O.E. Rolvaag, Willa Cather, James Welch, and Paul A. Johnsgard. The readings, as rich as the landscape, address geography, ecology, history, the transformation of the land, the adaptation of people to climate and isolation, and the experience of the Great Plains as both a sense of place and a state of mind. An excellent selection of writing, this is strongly recommended for all academic and public libraries.-Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana, Missoula Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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