Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography

Using contemporary autobiography theory, and literary and anthropological approaches, Wong traces the development of Native American autobiography from pre-literate oral, artistic, and dramatic personal narratives through late nineteenth/early twentieth-century life histories to contemporary autobiographies. Her purpose is to expand the definitions of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self, and to highlightthe incorporation of traditional tribal modes of personal narrative into Westerm forms of contemporary autobiography. The first chapter presents Wong's theoretical framework, considering Native American traditions of personal narrative in the context of the most recent work on autobiography theory. After this theoretical section, the book is arranged by the three basic historical periods of Native American literaturres: 1) the pre-Columbian period which includes oral and pictographic forms of personal narrative; 2) the late nineteenth/early twentieth-century transitional period which includes as-told-tolife histories that were solicited, translated, and edited by white editors and a few autobiographies written by Indians; 3) the contemporary period which includes written autobiographies that combine Native American and Euro-American forms and themes. These categories emphasize the historical shiftfrom orality to literacy as well as the transition from pre-contact tribal life to post-contact reservation life.