The Cold–and–Hunger Dance

Influenced by her rich Cherokee heritage and Christian faith, Diane Glancy's writing, like her multicultural background, is simultaneously liminal and transcendent. Being a "marginal voice in several worlds" does not victimize Glancy but empowers her "to tell several stories at once." She describes this migratory process of Native storytelling and the narrative multivocality it produces as a "cold-and-hunger dance." The Cold-and-Hunger Dance, Glancy's boldest and most stimulating collection of essays to date, is an imaginative and honest account of journeys to and from the margins of memory, everyday life, and different cultural worlds. Along the way, familiar images and concepts are juxtaposed to create a literary terrain both engaging and unsettling: the Bible and Black Elk Speaks converse; Glancy's dispute with a local bakery is played out as if on a world stage of warring nations; eggs and cultural identity implicate each other; lost Native languages speak powerfully through their silences to modern Native writers. The creative twists and darting metaphoric excursions engendered by this journey provide an intimate glimpse into the process and problematics of language for modern Native authors. Diane Glancy is an associate professor of English at Macalester College. She is the author of Claiming Breath (Nebraska 1992), which won the North American Indian Prose Award and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; The West Pole; and other books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and essays.

About the Author :
Diane Glancy is an associate professor of English at Macalester College. She is the author of Claiming Breath (Nebraska 1992), which won the North American Indian Prose Award and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; The West Pole; and other books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and essays.

Review :
"Glancy's is a major voice in the continuing process by which the complex interrelationship of American Indian culture to the broader American culture is working itself out, and The Cold-and-Hunger Dance must be read by everyone to whom that subject matters." World Literature Today "'I am a marginal voice in several worlds,' explains Glancy in this collection of essays and poems that interweave her mixed-blood Cherokee heritage with her strong Christian beliefs. Her writing, she emphasizes, provides the matrix that makes the disparate parts of her life one story. Through the work gathered here, the reader is allowed to examine the life of the 'other' that Glancy has forged for herself as a writer." Library Journal "The Cold-and-Hunger Dance ... moves on the double piston of acceptance and rejection. Like words in her stories, she finds her identity in the dialogic relationship between presence and absence. She embraces words and adds voice to many voices to condone the way she has been treated as a 'mixed-blood' Cherokee, Christian woman writer. One must say, Glancy, in her effort, surely has earned a place in the boat where every indigenous person of the continent shivers from a common cold and needs to participate in a revitalizing dance." Red Ink