Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen
File:Paula Gunn Allen.jpg Paula Gunn Allen (2007)
Born	Paula Marie Francis October 24, 1939 Albuquerque, New Mexico
Died
Occupation	Poet, novelist
Nationality	Laguna Pueblo
Alma mater	University of Oregon, University of New Mexico
Literary movement	Native American Renaissance

Paula Gunn Allen (October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008) was a Native American poet, literary critic, lesbian activist, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American and Native American descent, she identified with the Laguna Pueblo of her childhood years, the culture in which she'd grown up. She drew from its oral traditions for her fiction and poetry, and also wrote numerous essays on its themes. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary works, and wrote two biographies of Native American women.

In addition to her literary work, in 1986 she published a major study on the role of women in American Indian traditions, arguing that Europeans had de-emphasized the role of women in their accounts of native life because of their own patriarchal societies. It stimulated other scholarly work by feminist and Native American writers.

Early life and education

Born Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, New Mexico Allen grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese-American descent, Allen always identified most closely with the Laguna, among whom she spent her childhood and upbringing.

Her father, E. Lee Francis, owned a local store, the Cubero Trading Company, and later served as the lieutenant governor of New Mexico from 1967 to 1970. Her brother, Lee Francis, was a Laguna Pueblo-Anishinaabe poet, storyteller and educator.

Allen received a BA and MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon. She earned a PhD at the University of New Mexico, where she worked as a professor and began research on tribal religions. Allen also worked as a professor at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley before joining the UCLA Indian Center in the late 1980s.

Anthropological writings

Based on her own experiences and her study of Native American cultures, Paula Gunn Allen wrote The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986). This groundbreaking work argued that the dominant cultural view of Native American societies was biased and that European explorers and colonizers understood Native Peoples through the patriarchal lens. Gunn described the central role women played in many Native American cultures, including roles in political leadership, which were either downplayed or missed entirely by explorers and scholars from male-dominated European cultures. Allen argued that most Native Americans at the time of European contact were matrifocal and egalitarian with only a small percentage reflecting the European patriarchal pattern.

Allen's arguments and research were criticized by more mainstream scholars, as well as by American Indian Movement (AIM) member and scholar Gerald Vizenor, who accused her of "a simple reversal of essentialism". AIM has itself been criticized by feminists as being sexist. In spite of this, Allen's book and subsequent work has proved highly influential, encouraging other feminist studies of Native American cultures and literature, including an emergence of Indigenous feminism. It remains a classic text of Native American Studies and Women's Studies programs.

Literary career

Allen is well known as a novelist, poet and short story writer. Her work drew heavily on the Pueblo tales of Grandmother Spider and the Corn Maiden. It is noted for its strong political connotations. Critics have noted that Leslie Marmon Silko, also of Laguna descent, also draws on these traditional tales.

Her novel, The Woman Who Owned The Shadows (1983), features the woman Ephanie Atencio, the mixed-blood daughter of a mixed-blood mother who struggles with social exclusion and the obliteration of self.

As a poet, Allen published a collection of more than 30 years of work: Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995, judged to be her most successful. Allen's work is often categorized as belonging to the Native American Renaissance, but the author rejects the label.

Awards

Allen was awarded an American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation, the Native American Prize for Literature, the Susan Koppelman Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas in 2001. In 1999, the Modern Language Association awarded her the J. Hubbell Medal for American Literature.

Personal life

Two of Allen's children preceded her in death, Fuad Ali Allen and Eugene John Brown. She was survived by two children, Lauralee Brown and Suleiman Allen.

Bibliography

• The Woman Who Owned The Shadows (1983), novel

Poetry

• Life is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995 (1997)
• Skins and Bones: Poems 1979-1987 (1988)
• Shadow Country (1982)
• A Cannon Between My Knees (1981)
• Star Child: Poems (1981)
• Coyote's Daylight Trip (1978)
• Blind Lion Poems (The Blind Lion) (1974)

Academic

• Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting Border-Crossing Loose Canons (1998)
• Womanwork: Bridges: Literature across Cultures McGraw–Hill (1994)
• Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Women's Sourcebook (1991)
• The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986)
• Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Designs (1983)

Biography

• Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (2004)
• As Long As the Rivers Flow: The Stories of Nine Native Americans (1996)

Edited collections and anthologies

• Hozho: Walking in Beauty: Short Stories by American Indian Writers (2001)
• Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1974-1994 (1996)
• Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1900-1970 (1994)
• Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women (1989)

Anthology contributions

• The Serpent's Tongue: Prose, Poetry, and Art of the New Mexican Pueblos, ed. Nancy Wood. (1997)
• Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology, ed. Will Roscoe. (1988)

Further reading

Archival Resources

• Harper's Anthology Papers, 1984-1988 (440 items) are housed at the University of Michigan University Library.
• Persephone Press Records, 1974-1983 (8 cartons, 1 oversize box, 1 folio photograph folder) are housed at Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

External links

• Memorial Site for Paula Gunn Allen
• Official Paula Gunn Allen Site, Hanksville Storytellers
• Paula Gunn Allen, Voices in the Gaps, University of Minnesota