Description

In striking counterpoint to the conventional account, Pocahontas is a bold biography that tells the extraordinary story of the beloved Indian maiden from a Native American perspective. Dr. Paula Gunn Allen, the acknowledged founder of Native American literary studies, draws on sources often overlooked by Western historians and offers remarkable new insights into the adventurous life and sacred role of this foremost American heroine. Gunn Allen reveals why so many have revered Pocahontas as the female counterpart to the father of our nation, George Washington.

About the Author

Paula Gunn Allen, Ph.D., is an American of Laguna Pueblo/Metis descent and Professor Emerita of English and American Indian Studies at UCLA. The author of many books, including the landmark title, The Sacred Hoop, she is credited as the founder of the field of Native American literary studies. She received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation-National Research Council to study the oral tradition in Native American literature, a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has also been an Associate Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Institute. She has been honored with the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Native American Prize for Literature, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas. She lives in Fort Bragg, California.

Praise For…

“Allen’s Pocahontas ... is a real visionary, a prodigiously gifted young woman ... made manifest by Allen’s often lyrical and powerful writing.” — Publishers Weekly

“This is not your typical biography. It couldn’t be.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Nothing less than a watershed event in the historiography of the Americas.” — Carl Rollyson, The New York Sun

“Allen is a pathfinder.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Paula Gunn Allen, a pioneer of Native American literary studies, tells Pocahontas’ story from the Indian perspective.” — Oakland Tribune

[In] Ms. Allen’s spirited revision, [she] insists that Pocahontas cannot be understood except within an Algonquin Indian context. — Wall Street Journal