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by Gordon Henry

Gordon_Henry Genre_Fiction English
  • ISBN: 087013664X
  • Category: Fiction
  • Author: Gordon Henry
  • Subcategory: Genre Fiction
  • Other formats: rtf lit azw lrf
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: Michigan State University Press (April 30, 2003)
  • Pages: 236 pages
  • FB2 size: 1536 kb
  • EPUB size: 1589 kb
  • Rating: 4.6
  • Votes: 126
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The Light People by Gordon Henry is truly a unique novel. The Light People is an interesting web of stories told in a variety of ways. The stories weave together creating something new and fascinating.

The Light People by Gordon Henry is truly a unique novel. While at times hard to decipher the ongoing web of interconnecting stories, they interconnect. The connections between the stories creates this family of stories that relate to one another and bounce off each other, in the way a family does. This family of stories creates a mood for a major theme running through the novel of family and what defines it.

The Light People is a 1994 novel written by Gordon Henry. The book won the American Book Award in 1995. The Light People is a work of Native American fiction, composed of many distinct but ultimately interconnected stories happening in and around an Ojibwe village in northern Minnesota, and the Twin Cities. Gordon Henry Jr. was born in 1955 in Philadelphia, PA, and is an enrolled citizen of the White Earth Nation.

The Light People book. The Light People is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota.

The Light People" is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota

The Light People" is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota.

The Light People is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in. .Henry offers us a novel which is both dislocated and careful intertwined. There is a dichotomy of balance and seperation in this book which readers may find, initially, hard to grasp.

The Light People is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota. Taking inspiration from traditional Anishinabe stories and drawing from his own family's storytelling tradition, Gordon Henry, J. has woven a tapestry of interlocking narratives in The Light People, a novel of surpassing emotional strength. By this, I mean that the story is forever shifting narrative perspective, voice and style.

Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books.

Indians of North America - Fiction. Minnesota - Fiction. University of Oklahoma Press. Books for People with Print Disabilities.

Henry's debut novel, The Light People (1994), explores Chippewa life and . He co-authored the textbook Ojibwa and has released a book of poetry, The Failure of Certain Charms, (Earthworks). The Light People: A novel.

Henry's debut novel, The Light People (1994), explores Chippewa life and culture and the style takes some of its elements from the Chippewa style of oral story telling. Henry has also published short stories and poems in various journals and anthologies.

Gordon Henry won the American Book Award for his novel THE LIGHT PEOPLE (1994). He is an Anishinabe poet and novelist, and an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota. Tom Stanton is the author of the New York Times bestseller TERROR IN THE CITY OF CHAMPIONS: MURDER, BASEBALL, AND THE SECRET SOCIETY THAT SHOCKED DEPRESSION-ERA DETROIT.

AMERICAN INDIAN NOVEL THE LIGHT PEOPLE By Gordon Henry J. Oskinaway, the Chippewa boy at the center of Gordon Henry J. s arresting first novel, "The Light People," would like an update on his missing parents.

Oskinaway, the Chippewa boy at the center of Gordon Henry J. So he and his grandparents turn to a healer and diviner named Jake Seed, thereby tripping loose a fantastic parade of family tales, dreamscapes and corrective histories. Heavy themes - cultural identity, the rewriting of history, mythmaking - lurk everywhere, waiting to go ponderous.

Recognizing America's need for enlightened leadership, Republican senator Henry Blair (1834-1920) of New Hampshire embarked on an ambitious crusade to enact dramatic . The Politics of American Discontent.

Recognizing America's need for enlightened leadership, Republican senator Henry Blair (1834-1920) of New Hampshire embarked on an ambitious crusade to enact dramatic progressive changes. Henry W. Blair's Campaign to Reform America follows Blair's remarkable political career. At the heart of his efforts was a push to improve the nation's system of public education, but his reform programs addressed a wide range of issues, including legal rights, economic rights, women's suffrage, and racial equality.

The Light People is a multi-genre novel that includes a series of nested stories about a tribal community in Northern Minnesota. Major themes include Oskinaway’s search for his parents and the legal wrangling over the possession of a leg that has been removed from a tribal elder. Each story is linked to previous and successive stories to form a discourse on identity and cultural appropriation, all told with humor and wisdom.     Taking inspiration from traditional Anishinabe stories and drawing from his own family's storytelling tradition, Gordon Henry, Jr., has woven a tapestry of interlocking narratives in The Light People, a novel of surpassing emotional strength. His characters tell of their experiences, dreams, and visions in a multitude of literary styles and genres. Poetry, drama, legal testimony, letters, and essays combine with more conventional narrative techniques to create a multifaceted, deeply rooted, and vibrant portrait of the author's own tribal culture. Keenly aware of Eurocentric views of that culture, Henry offers a "corrective history" where humor and wisdom transcend the political.     In the contemporary Minnesota village of Four Bears, on the mythical Fineday Reservation, a young Chippewa boy named Oskinaway is trying to learn the whereabouts of his parents. His grandparents turn for help to a tribal elder, one of the light people, Jake Seed. Seed's assistant, a magician who performs at children's birthday parties, tells Oskinaway's family his story, which gives way to the stories of those he encounters. Narratives unfold into earlier narratives, spinning back in time and encompassing the intertwined lives of the Fineday Chippewas, eventually revealing the place of Oskinaway and his parents in a complex web of human relationships.


Reviews about The Light People: A Novel (4):
Era
I have just finished reading the novel and must take the time to praise it. First, I have to say that I find the book far superior to Erdrich's Love Medicine. In fact, there is no comparison, except maybe that both present a series of stories that end up crisscrossing each other, although you don't see that until most of the half of the book. If I were to compare the novel to another, the one that comes to my mind, in terms of structure, is Silko's Almanac of the Dead, even if Gordon Henry's novel has a much narrower scope. Still I think he covers a lot of issues of contemporary Indian life: storytelling, museums, philosophy, anticolonial struggles, community, myth, Vietnam etc. Unlike Erdrich Gordon Henry is always grounded in specific issues, never falling into generalities. I highly recommend it.
sobolica
It was written well, but the content was very difficult for me to follow. I am used to reading books that follow a certain beginning to end sequence and this "time travels" with events, back and forth.
ZEr0
“The Light People” by Gordon Henry is truly a unique novel. “The Light People” is an interesting web of stories told in a variety of ways. The stories weave together creating something new and fascinating. While at times hard to decipher the ongoing web of interconnecting stories, they interconnect. The connections between the stories creates this family of stories that relate to one another and bounce off each other, in the way a family does. This family of stories creates a mood for a major theme running through the novel of family and what defines it. There is also a coming of age tale woven throughout the novel as well, creating a realistic messy version of growing up and self-discovery.

Henry’s style of writing is fascinating. Henry creates a hybrid fiction that could be argued as being post-modern. He weaves his stories in different styles of creative writing, from poetry, songs, a more “classic” form of fiction, and several other surprises throughout. However, these forms of creative writing work are also what make this novel complex and at times hard to unweave. Yet, there is something to be said about this complex weaving of narrative, that adds to this novel’s unique way of creating a discussion about different situations that Henry’s characters encounter.

It is very easy to miss something within the novel, so paying attention is key and important. Because of its many narrative and many stylistic choices, take a pen and paper and keep track of what is going on, or make margin notes. Allow the novel to make you question the way you have viewed something previously, or question the novel itself. Henry creates something that easily creates questions and can be questioned.

Henry’s stories are not meant to be linear and should not be viewed as such. They are, at a glance, a seemingly chaotic woven spider’s web, each tread connecting in a way that may not make sense at first. However, upon closer inspection of the web, you find yourself trap like an insect unable to escape its captivating world that is inspiring in a way.

While not my favorite read by far, “The Light People” by Henry should be respected for how it truly pushes the definition of fiction in literature and what traditionally creates fiction. Henry’s pushing and breaking of the standard, conforming rules of what makes a novel is special and should be appreciated. His work feels like a new and very different version of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.” Henry uses the non-linear structure of the post-modern “Slaughterhouse Five” and deconstructs fiction in an untraditional manner. To say that poetry cannot be considered fiction within the novel feels wrong in a way due to the way it creates a new story added to the spider’s web of stories.

Entering a new world of fiction is always an exciting journey, whether it was your favorite novel or not. And this is something that creates that new leap forward in fiction. While many books have made this leap, none have quite made this leap for me like “The Light People,” it truly is a different read, and if you are up for its elegant confusion pick it up!
Andromajurus
“The Light People” is a group of stories that brings together an interesting book that defies the typical ideals of fiction. Gordon Henry’s "The Light People" uses different literary structures and create an engaging exciting story. Although a difficult, dense read, Henry manages to keep you wanting more and keeps you wanting to know what is going to happen next. There were several parts that were very confusing but most questions were answered in the end. The story does not have the typical linear form but rather, almost, a spiral that keeps you on your toes. At some points you might want to put it down but its worth reading until the end. By using different styles, (essay, haiku, ect) there is never a boring moment.
Overall, I truly enjoyed the book as a whole, though there were parts that either confused me, were hard to read, hard to understand or seemed like they were completely irrelevant to the story, stick with it until the end and you’ll enjoy it. I recommend you read slowly and closely because there are always little things that might surprise you or you might miss all together.

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