Shadow Distance

Book excerpt: A wide-ranging collection of fiction, essays, poetry and more by the acclaimed Native American author of Bearheart and Interior Landscapes. Gerald Vizenor is one of our era’s most important and prolific Native American writers. Drawing on the best work of an acclaimed career, Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader reveals the wide range of his imagination and the evolution of his central themes. This compelling collection includes not only selections from Vizenor’s innovative fiction, but also poetry, autobiography, essays, journalism, and the previously unpublished screenplay “Harold of Orange,” winner of the Film-in-the-Cities national screenwriting competition. Whether focusing on Native American tricksters or legal and financial claims of tribal sovereignty, Vizenor continually underscores the diversities of modern traditions, the mixed ethnicity that characterizes those who claim Native American origin, and cultural permeability of an increasingly commercial, global world.