Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.
Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice, as she believed there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions" among "those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children."
Judy Grahn is an American poet and author.
Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A woman of Laguna Pueblo descent, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet.He is considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
Paula Gunn Allen was an American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Arab-American, and Native American descent, she identified with her mother's people, the Laguna Pueblo. Gunn Allen wrote numerous essays, stories and poetry with Native American and feminist themes, and two biographies of Native American women. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary writing.
Deborah A. Miranda is an American writer, poet, and professor of English at Washington and Lee University.
Kathrine Story ("Kay") French was an American anthropologist born in Illinois. Educated in California, she studied ceremonialism and naming practices on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in the state of Oregon. She was married to fellow anthropologist David H. French.
Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory. Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception, it was not until the 1970s that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association – the Association for Feminist Anthropology – and its own publication, Feminist Anthropology. Their former journal Voices is now defunct.
For the American educational theorist and educator, see Janet Hale.
Michael D. Jackson is a New Zealand poet and anthropologist who has taught in anthropology departments at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen. He is currently distinguished professor of world religions at Harvard Divinity School.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, Dog Road Woman, won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books and edited eight anthologies. She is known for addressing issues of culture, prejudice, rights, the environment, peace, violence, abuse, and labor in her poetry and other creative works.
Two-spirit is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender social role in their communities.
Political poetry brings together politics and poetry. According to "The Politics of Poetry" by David Orr, poetry and politics connect through expression and feeling, although both of them are matters of persuasion. Political poetry connects to people's feelings, and politics connects to current events. Poetry can also make political references and have real effects on the perception of politics.
Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, and Stephen Graham Jones. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.
Wendy Xu is a Chinese American poet.
Feminist poetry is inspired by, promotes, or elaborates on feminist principles and ideas. It might be written with the conscious aim of expressing feminist principles, although sometimes it is identified as feminist by critics in a later era. Some writers are thought to express feminist ideas even if the writer was not an active member of the political movement during their era. Many feminist movements, however, have embraced poetry as a vehicle for communicating with public audiences through anthologies, poetry collections, and public readings.
Ariana Brown is an American spoken word poet. In 2014, she was part of a winning team at the national collegiate poetry slam. Ariana Brown has won the “Best Poet” award twice at the same event.
A Radiant Curve is a compilation of poems and stories written by professor Luci Tapahonso. It is one of six collective poetry works by Tapahonso. A Radiant Curve is a work with basis in daily life, which is closely related to Luci Tapahonso's Navajo culture. These stories include memories of her family, generational teachings, and her perspective as a Navajo person living in modern times. A Radiant Curve tries to emphasize storytelling in order to speak to the commonality of the shared human experience across cultures as evidenced by the double use of both Navajo and English. The book was published in 2008 by The University of Arizona Press.
Diane Marie Burns was an Anishinaabe and Chemehuevi artist, known for her poetry and performance art highlighting Native American experience. After moving to New York City, she become involved with the Lower East Side poetry community, including the Nuyorican Poets Café.
