A01=Orlando White
american history
author
Author_Orlando White
Category=DCF
colonization
contemporary poetry collection
culture
dine
emotional
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
experimental writing
healing
imagery
indigenous
journey
literary poems
metaphor
native american poet
navajo nation
perspective
stolen land
symbolism
use of language
Product details
- ISBN 9781597091350
- Weight: 113g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 02 Apr 2009
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Orlando White explores language from a Diné (Navajo) perspective. One idea that interests him, inspires him to think and write, is the idea of the English language as a forgotten language.
Imagine if we as a people, all people in the United States, are speaking an Indigenous language rather than English; that the English language exists merely as a language of the colonial past. White explores and experiments with this particular colonizing language, because that language remains a kind of cultural/intellectual/social threat to Indigenous thought, as English was imposed to dehumanize Indigenous peoples from their culture, language, and consciousness.
White's Diné perspective poetically reveals audience notion of linguistic dehumanization within the Bone Light volume. Non-Natives, throughout American history, have documented the Indigenous Americas using the dominant written word of English. Thus, as an artist, White writes what he writes to document as well, but also to create something a bit more beautiful (intriguing) than harmful (erasing). White is not attempting critique of the English language; he is working with it to gain a better understanding of viewpoints, veritably creating a relationship by way of exploring language.
