Jace Weaver – författare

Loyalty to the community is the highest value in Native American cultures, argues Jace Weaver. In That the People Might Live, he explores a wide range of Native American literature from 1768 to the present, taking this sense of community as both a starting point and a lens. Weaver considers some of the best known Native American writers, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Vine Deloria, as well as many others who are receiving critical attention here for the first time. He contends that the single thing that most defines these authors'' writings, and makes them deserving of study as a literature separate from the national literature of the United States, is their commitment to Native community and its survival. He terms this commitment "communitism"--a fusion of "community" and "activism." The Native American authors are engaged in an ongoing quest for community and write out of a passionate commitment to it. They write, literally, "that the People might live." Drawing upon the best Native and non-Native scholarship (including the emerging postcolonial discourse), as well as a close reading of the writings themselves, Weaver adds his own provocative insights to help readers to a richer understanding of these too often neglected texts. A scholar of religion, he also sets this literature in the context of Native cultures and religious traditions, and explores the tensions between these traditions and Christianity.

In a contentious field characterised by divergence of opinion, ""American Indian Literary Nationalism"" intervenes in recent controversial debates on the role of hybridity, suggesting common sense strategies rooted in the material realities of various communities. These essays deal with issues the authors have been wrestling with throughout their careers. Jace Weaver, Craig Womack, and Robert Warrior, assert being a 'nationalist' is a legitimate perspective from which to approach Native American literature and criticism. They consider such a methodology not only defensible but also crucial to supporting Native national sovereignty and self-determination, an important goal of Native American studies, generally. However, the authors do not believe the nationalism suggested in ""American Indian Literary Nationalism"" is the only possible approach to Native literature. Each invites Natives and non-Native allies who support tribal national sovereignty and nationalist readings of Native literature to join the discussion. With this writing, each author acknowledges and honours the foundational contribution of Simon Ortiz in his 1981 'MELUS' essay, 'Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism'. It has been over thirty-five years since academe has accepted the legitimacy of American Indian literature. Weaver, Warrior, and Womack now call for more Native voices to articulate literary criticism and for clearer thinking about what links the literature to Native communities.

A collection of plays by American Indian playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr.Finalist for the 2020 ForeWord INDIE Book of the Year in the Multicultural Adult Fiction Category Restless Spirits is a collection of previously unpublished plays by contemporary Assiniboine playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Including one full-length and seven one-act plays, this book reflects one of the author's most creative and productive periods in his career. Selected by Yellow Robe, in consultation with editor Jace Weaver, the plays reveal the range of Yellow Robe's writing from tragedies to farce. They are unified by their supernatural themes or significant elements, including Wood Bones, his most recent and highly successful full-length play. Weaver's introduction says that the works in this collection clearly demonstrate that Yellow Robe is not just a great American Indian playwright, but a great American playwright in the company of David Mamet, Lynn Nottage, and Wallace Shawn. Renowned American Indian playwright Hanay L. Geiogamah provides a foreword and calls this volume "a real gift to the American Indian theater-and to theater, more generally."

From the earliest moments of European contact, Native Americans have played a pivotal role in the Atlantic experience, yet they often have been relegated to the margins of the region's historical record. The Red Atlantic, Jace Weaver's sweeping and highly readable survey of history and literature, synthesizes scholarship to place indigenous people of the Americas at the center of our understanding of the Atlantic world. Weaver illuminates their willing and unwilling travels through the region, revealing how they changed the course of world history.Indigenous Americans, Weaver shows, crossed the Atlantic as royal dignitaries, diplomats, slaves, laborers, soldiers, performers, and tourists. And they carried resources and knowledge that shaped world civilization--from chocolate, tobacco, and potatoes to terrace farming and suspension bridges. Weaver makes clear that indigenous travelers were cosmopolitan agents of international change whose engagement with other societies gave them the tools to advocate for their own sovereignty even as it was challenged by colonialism.