Sending My Heart Back Across the Years

Using contemporary autobiography theory and literary, historical, and ethnographic approaches, Wong explores the transformation of Native American autobiography from pre-contact oral and pictographic personal narratives through late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century life histories to written contemporary autobiographies. This book expands the definition of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self,highlighting the incorporation of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography and charting the historical transition from orality to literacy.

“"Numerous photographs of pictographs not only illustrate [Wong's] argument but also provide the reader with an excellent sample of this very interesting but not readily available material....Wong's study opens up rewarding new avenues in the study of Native American autobiography."--NorthDakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains”

"A remarkable synthesis....Well written, well organized, and insightful....A book that will endure on the shelves of those who work in the fields of American-Indian history, American-Indian literature, oral history, and in the fields of biography and autobiography in the United States."--Florida Historical Review"Numerous photographs of pictographs not only illustrate [Wong's] argument but also provide the reader with an excellent sample of this very interesting but not readily available material....Wong's study opens up rewarding new avenues in the study of Native American autobiography."--North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains"A serious study that helps readers to better understand the evolution of Native American life and literature."--Magill Book Reviews"A welcome addition to previous books on the subject....Sending My Heart Back Across the Years contains useful, engaging, nontechnical discussion of several Plains autobiographers and their work."--American Literature"An excellent scholarly work by Professor Wong. It provides for cross cultural understanding through synthesis as well as analysis rather than static academic narrative."--The Chronicles of Oklahoma"A remarkable synthesis....Well written, well organized, and insightful....A book that will endure on the shelves of those who work in the fields of American-Indian history, American-Indian literature, oral history, and in the fields of biography and autobiography in the United States."--Florida Historical Review"Numerous photographs of pictographs not only illustrate [Wong's] argument but also provide the reader with an excellent sample of this very interesting but not readily available material....Wong's study opens up rewarding new avenues in the study of Native American autobiography."--North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains"A serious study that helps readers to better understand the evolution of Native American life and literature."--Magill Book Reviews"A welcome addition to previous books on the subject....Sending My Heart Back Across the Years contains useful, engaging, nontechnical discussion of several Plains autobiographers and their work."--American Literature"An excellent scholarly work by Professor Wong. It provides for cross cultural understanding through synthesis as well as analysis rather than static academic narrative."--The Chronicles of Oklahoma

<br>Hertha D. Sweet Wong is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography; editor of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: A Casebook; and co-editor with John<br>Elder of Family of Earth and Sky: Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World.<br>Jana Sequoya Magdaleno lives in Northern California where her focus is on Native community health and healing practices.<br>

Using contemporary autobiography theory and literary, historical, and ethnographic approaches, Wong explores the transformation of Native American autobiography from pre-contact oral and pictographic personal narratives through late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century life histories to written contemporary autobiographies. This book expands the definition of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self, highlighting the incorporation of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography and charting the historical transition from orality to literacy.

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