"Noted Nez Perce Fiction writer and critic W.S. Penn, one of the most provocative Native essayists writing today, turns his wry and penetrating gaze on the state of Native life and literature today. Marshaling personal experience, remarkable critical acumen, and plain old good sense, Penn considers how modern scholarship has affected the ways Native Americans and others see themselves and their world. The result is a uniquely frank, witty, and unsettling critique of contemporary literary and cultural theory and its ability to come to terms with the real lives and literatures of Native Americans." "Key to this critique is the troubling issue of what properly constitutes a traditional "Indian" identity and an "Indian" literature within Native communities and in the academy. In confronting this issue, Penn exposes some of the sillier uses of the serious language of diversity as well as the impact of identity politics on Native professors in a world where the age-old language of cultural dominance still underpins the showcasing and teaching of minority literatures. And yet, Penn argues, the storytelling traditions so central to Native communities remain very much alive today, hidden in the corners of the literary canon. His book is a bracing challenge to make these traditions a foundation for a distinctive literary and cultural theory for Native lives and literatures."--Jacket.