Description: In Reconstructing the Native South, Melanie Benson Taylor examines the diverse body of Native American literature in the contemporary U.S. South. In so doing Taylor advances a provocative, even counterintuitive claim: that the U.S. South and its Native American survivors have far more in common than mere geographical proximity.
Brief description: MELANIE BENSON TAYLOR is professor of English and creative writing and of Native American and Indigenous studies at Dartmouth College. She is the editor of The Cambridge History of Native American Literature and The Norton Critical Edition of Faulkner's Light in August, and the author of The Indian in American Southern Literature; Reconstructing the Native South: American Indian Literature and the Lost Cause; and Disturbing Calculations: The Economics of Identity in Postcolonial Southern Literature, 1912-2002 (both Georgia).
Review Quotes:
In the newly emerging field of southeastern Indian literary studies, Reconstructing the Native South does a wonderful job of laying out important groundwork, contributing significant original insights, and raising some difficult questions to stimulate further exchange and debate. It is confidently, fluidly written, well-documented, well argued, and makes use of the most current texts and methodologies available, positioning itself in the cutting-edge intersections of New Southern Studies and American Indian Studies.
--Ellen Arnold "East Carolina University"