Thursday, May 29, 2008

First Nations Fantasy by Daniel Heath Justice




Within Native Studies, there are a lot of awesome people. Daniel Heath Justice is among them. He teaches in the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Toronto. Daniel is Cherokee.

Academic work aside, Daniel writes fantasy. Specifically, a trilogy called "The Way of Thorn and Thunder." In it are three books: Kynship, Wynwood, and Dreyd.






You can read an interview with Daniel here.

I bought the books, but have not yet read them. Daniel calls the trilogy "an Indigenous Epic Fantasy." On this page, he talks about the "civilization" vs "savagery" binary, the Noble and Ignoble Savage imagery that predominates representations of indigenous peoples, and then, he talks about his series.

If you've read them, I'd love to hear your thoughts! If you're a fan of fantasy, order the books. They're published by (and available from) Kegedonce Press.

3 comments:

david santos said...

Excellent post, Debbie, excellent.
have a nice day

Anonymous said...

Debbie, thank you so much for posting this. I'm hoping to write my dissertation on the connections between children's fantasy literature and folklore, so this series looks right up my alley. On a more general note, I've been reading your blog for some time now, and always find it both informative and enjoyable. Thank you for what you do.

Abigail

k8 said...

Ooh! More books to put on my "to read" list!! I like fantasy, folklore, and all of the intertextuality, too.