Paula Gunn Allen 02-20-1992
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Authors
Allen, Paula Gunn
Issue Date
1992-02-20
Type
Video
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Stan Sanville Rubin talks with Dr. Paula Gunn Allen. The interview opens with Dr. Gunn Allen reading an excerpt from "Grandmothers of the Light". Paula Gunn Allen received the MFA Degree
is a Laguna Pueblo Sioux Native American who was born in New Mexico and educated at the University of Oregon. Where she received the MFA degree in Creative Writing and at the University of New Mexico. Where she received a PhD doing her doctoral dissertation, one of the very first on the area of Native American studies. She is well known as a scholar of Native American writings and an advocate. Particularly for Native American women and the anthologizer of the writing of Native American women. Among her many books, she has served as. Editor for Studies in American Indian Literature for the Modern Language Association. And her collections of Native American women's writings include "The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions", the well-known "Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women", and most recently "Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook". She is also a fiction writer, poet, and essayist; who's own creative works include the novel "The Woman Who Owned the Shadows" and seven volumes of poetry, including "Skins and Bones" poems, 1979 to 1987. She was Professor of English at UCLA.
Paula Gunn Allen speaks at length about the presence and power of the feminine as a divine force and as a human way of being and of storytelling. She discusses her experience through childhood and talks about what it was like to realize she was a minority and the lifelong anger that comes with being labeled as "marginalized" when those margines aren't real and shouldn't be made anyway. Stan shifts the conversation to Paula's career. She speaks about how she came into writing, who her mentors were and what her experience was breaking into American English Literature. She details the challenges and small victories she had encountered in her career up to the time of filming. Paula goes on to talk about the influence of Native tradition, transformation, and the magic of both in her writing. She closes the interview with a reading of "A New Birth".
Description
Citation
Publisher
SUNY Brockport