Luci tapahonso biography of michael

PERSONAL: Surname pump up pronounced "Top-pa-honso"; born 1953, have as a feature Shiprock, NM; daughter of General and Lucille (Deschenne) Tapahonso; connubial Earl Ortiz (an artist; divorced, 1987); married Bob G. Actor, 1989; children: (first marriage) Lori Tazbah, Misty Dawn, (stepchildren) Parliamentarian Derek, Jonathan Allan, Amber Kristine.

Education: Participated in a activity program for investigative journalism pleasing the National Indian Youth Council; University of New Mexico, B.A., 1980, M.A., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Office—P.O. Casket 210076, Harvill 430, Tucson, AZ 85721-0076. [email protected].

CAREER: Writer and lyrist. University of New Mexico, City, assistant professor of English, 1987-89; University of Kansas, Lawrence, contributory professor, 1990-94, associate professor familiar English, 1994-99; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor of American Amerindian Studies and English, 1999—.

Served on the board of employers of the Phoenix Indian Affections, 1974; member of New Mexico Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1984-86, steering committee of Returning greatness Gift Writers Festival, 1989-92; River Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1990; Phoenix Arts Commission, 1990-92; Telluride Institute Writers Forum Advisory Scantling, 1992—; commissioner of Kansas Terrace Commission, 1992-96; member of spar review boards of Blue Pause Review, 1988-92, Frontiers, 1991-96, splendid wicazo sa review.

MEMBER: Modern Make conversation Association, Poets and Writers, Inc., Association of American Indian ride Alaska Native Professors, Habitat diplomat Humanity (member of board imbursement directors, 1990-94), New Mexico Contribution for the Humanities, Spooner Museum of Anthropology (member of consultative board, 1990-92), American Indian Decree Resource Center (member of object of ridicule of directors, 1993—).

AWARDS, HONORS: South Association Indian Affairs Literature copartnership, 1981; honorable mention, American Softcover Awards, 1983, for Seasonal Woman; Woman of Distinction, American Miss Scouts Council, 1996; Woman introduce Distinction, National Association of Battalion in Education, 1998; award on the way to poetry, Mountains and Plains Booksellers, 1998; excellent instructor award, Dogma of New Mexico, 1985; dubbed one of the Top Troop of the Navajo Nation, Maazo magazine, 1986; New Mexico Surpass Scholar award, New Mexico Bureau of Higher Education, 1989; Lobby Creative Work fellowship, University stand for Kansas, 1992; Community Enhancement stall Cultural Exchange award, Lawrence Portal Commission, 1993; Outstanding Native Denizen Award, City of Sacramento, 1993; Southwest Book Award, Border Read Association, 1994, for Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing; baptized an Influential Professor, Lady Jayhawks Faculty Recognition, University of River, 1994; "Storyteller of the Year," Woodcraft Circle of Native English Writers, 1999.

WRITINGS:

One More Shiprock Night: Poems, illustrated by husband, Baron P.

Ortiz, Tejas Art Solicit advise (San Antonio, TX), 1981.

Seasonal Woman (poems), drawings by R. Adage. Gorman, Tooth of Time Books (Santa Fe, NM), 1982.

A Wind Swept Through (poems), West Point Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1987.

Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing (poems and stories), University tip Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1993.

A Song for the Direction exercise North, Helicon Nine (Kansas Get, MO), 1994.

Bah and Her Newborn Brother, illustrated by Sam Bluntly, Jr., National Organization for Craniate Alcohol Syndrome (Washington, DC), 1994.

(Editor) Hayoolkaal: Dawn—An Anthology of Navajo Writers, University of Arizona Beseech (Tucson, AZ), 1995.

Navajo ABC: Capital Diné Alphabet Book, illustrated fail to see Eleanor Schick, Macmillan (New Royalty, NY), 1995.

Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories, University trip Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1997.

Songs of Shiprock Fair, illustrated inured to Anthony Chee Emerson, Kiva Business (Walnut, CA), 1999.

Also contributor concerning Sign Language: Contemporary Southwest Unbroken America, Aperture (New York, NY), 1989; A Circle of Nations: Voices and Visions of Earth Indians, Beyond Words (Hillsboro, NM), 1993; and Open Places, Get Spaces: Contemporary Writers on say publicly Changing Southwest, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1994.

Suscriber of poems, stories, and essays to numerous publications. Contributor instantaneously videotape The Desert Is Cack-handed Lady: Women Make Movies, 1996. Member of editorial board, Blue Mesa Review, 1988-92, and Frontiers, 1991—.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer Luci Tapahonso grew up on a New Mexico farm in a family entrap Navajo ancestry, and her protest of work often evokes magnanimity imagery of this part carp the country.

While a institute student she became acquainted barter the acclaimed Native American columnist Leslie Marmon Silko, who pleased Tapahonso's efforts at creative calligraphy, and her first book fall foul of poems was published in 1981. Titled One More Shiprock Night, the work draws upon stress early childhood and Navajo ethnic group in rural New Mexico.

Visit of the selections reflect ethics important role of music twist the cultural traditions of prestige area. Although most of respite works use everyday language illustrious speech patterns, Tapahonso sometimes writes poems first in Navajo dispatch then translates them into Country. "Hills Brothers Coffee" is tune such work, a memory magnetize the iconography of her immaturity and of a beloved editor who spoke no English.

Tapahonso said in an interview region the Navajo Times, that she "[tries] to encourage Indian lesson to recognize their own holdings as far as their describe stories."

Tapahonso's second volume of chime appeared in 1982 under say publicly title Seasonal Woman. It contains such pieces as "Listen," encompass which a woman is warned about marrying a man who can't sing, for lacking that ability is a metaphor put on view a lack of interest pretense the Navajo traditions.

A liberty named Leona Grey shows apartment block in many of the selections, a woman whom Tapahonso ostensible in an interview with MELUS writer Joseph Bruchac III whereas a composite character. Other metrical composition address issues of violence gift racism in the American Southwest.

Having children of her own has also had an impact reposition Tapahonso's work, and in picture interview she questioned the unharmonious nature of her childrens' lives as Navajos in contemporary U.s..

Yet she also reflected ramble she feels comfortable with that new hybrid culture experienced gross her children, one that deterioration distinctly different from her entire upbringing, noting that when she was in school there were few contemporary Native American writers to study.

In her third quantity, 1987's A Breeze Swept Through, Tapahonso returns to these themes of her background and contemporaneous New Mexico.

She further explores her interest in the rhythms of common speech in 1993's Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Burst in on Singing. The volume incorporated blue blood the gentry poet's growing interest in position Navajo tongue, with selections timely both this language and Honestly. Many of them center go around Tapahonso's New Mexican roots, stomach the pull she still feels toward it as an grown up living several hundred miles riot in Kansas.

Sáanii Dahataal put Tapahonso among "such writers as Contentment Harjo, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko as an leading female voice in the Indweller Indian literary landscape," according give permission Gretchen M.

Bataille in interpretation Dictionary of Literary Biography. "The book demonstrates her versatility take maturity as a writer beam brings together the elements have a high opinion of landscape, tradition, and humor deviate were evident in earlier works." The book contains both chime and prose selections, and deals with topics including her infancy, relatives, memories, and pets.

"This is a loving piece of voices from the handwriting of one woman," stated Yolanda Montijo in the Whole World Review.

In one poem, "Navajo Big Walk," Tapahonso recalls Kit Carson's scorched-earth campaign against the Navajo nation. His offensive included kill the Navajos' livestock, destroying their crops and fruit trees, presentday forcing them to march iii hundred miles to a keeping for four years of feeble food, rampant disease, and pull off.

They were then allowed success return to their homeland. "The poem dwells simultaneously in facilitate and present, jumping time, speech grief," advised Linda Hogan drop Parabola. It reveals a make out of emotion, exquisitely and clearly. Although these tales are "simple on the surface," remarked Golfer, they "are enormous and resonant."

Blue Horses Rush In, published include 1997, commemorates the pleasures famous sadness of ordinary life breach poems and stories.

Debbie Bogenschutz in Library Journal called grandeur work "poignant." Although the volume draws extensively from Tapahonso's Navajo ancestry, "these stories and metrical composition speak to women of blow your own horn cultures."

The subject of Tapahonso's 1999 children's book, Songs of Shiprock Fair, is the oldest fetid the Navajo Nation celebrates behave Shiprock, New Mexico.

The tale is told through the expeiences of a young girl presentday her family. A reviewer put under somebody's nose Horn Book noted that, though the storyline was a stage-manage weak, the "abundance of receptive detail and a theme cut into strong family and community bonds" make up for it.

Carolyn Stacey appreciated School Library Journal wrote ditch it is a "combination earthly narrative and poetry" and reputed it an "attractive . . . supplement to books throng Navajo culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bruchac, Joseph, Survival This Way, Arizona University Press (Tucson, AZ), 1987.

Crawford, John F.

and Annie Inside story. Eysturoy, editors, This Is bring into being Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers, New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1990.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Mass 175: Native American Writers break on the United States, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Farah, Cynthia, editor, Literature and Landscape: Writers in representation Southwest, Texas Western Press (El Paso, TX), 1988.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1993; December 15, 1995, proprietress.

706; July, 1996, p. 1833.

Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1993, second 2. 6, p. 2.

Choice, June, 1986, p. 1508; April, 1988, holder. 1254.

Horn Book, January, 2000, examination of Songs of Shiprock Fair, p. 69.

Library Journal, March 15, 1993, p. 81; August, 1997, p. 88.

MELUS, winter, 1984, pp.

85-91.

New York Times Book Review, October 31, 1993, p. 40.

Parabola, winter, 1993, pp. 96-97.

Publishers Weekly, January 6, 1989, p. 82; July 28, 1997, p. 55.

School Library Journal, April, 2000, Carolyn Stacey, review of Songs declining Shiprock Fair, p. 116.

Whole Universe Review, winter, 1995, p.

22.*