Conversations with LeAnne Howe (Literary Conversations Series)

177 Pages·2022·1.554 MB·English

by  Kirstin L. Squint (editor)

Conversations with
LeAnne Howe
Literary Conversations Series
Monika Gehlawat
General Editor
Conversations with
LeAnne Howe
Edited by Kirstin L. Squint
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of
the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University,
Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University,
Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University,
University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of University Presses.

Copyright © 2022 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2022
∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
LCCN 2021056988
ISBN 9781496836441 (hardback)
ISBN 9781496836458 (trade paperback)
ISBN 9781496836465 (epub single)
ISBN 9781496836472 (epub institutional)
ISBN 9781496836489 (pdf single)
ISBN 9781496836496 (pdf institutional)

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Books by LeAnne Howe
Shell Shaker. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2001.
Equinoxes Rouges. Trans. by Daniele Laruelle. Paris: Lethielleux, 2004.
Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2005.
Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007.
With Janice Acoose, et al. Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
Edited with Harvey Markowitz and Denise Cummings. Seeing Red: Hollywood’s Pixeled
Skins—American Indians and Film. East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 2013.
Choctalking on Other Realities. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2013.
With Doireann Ní Ghriofa. Singing Still: Libretto for the 1847 Choctaw Gift to the Irish
for Famine Relief. Privately printed chapbook, 2017.
Savage Conversations. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2019.
Edited with Padraig Kirwan. Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange,
1847–Present. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020.
Edited with Joy Harjo and Jennifer Foerster. When the Light of the World Was Subdued,
Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. New York:
Norton, 2020.

Contents
Introduction ix
Chronology xvii
An Interview with LeAnne Howe 3
Golda Sargento / 2002
Choctawan Aesthetics, Spirituality, and Gender Relations:
An Interview with LeAnne Howe 6
Kirstin L. Squint / 2008
Unspoken Intimacies, Miko Kings, Hampton University, and Red-Black
Convergences: A Conversation with LeAnne Howe 20
LaRose Davis / 2010
Interview with LeAnne Howe and Robbie Ethridge 29
David Davis / 2012
The Native South, Performance, and Globalized Trans-Indigeneity:
A Conversation with LeAnne Howe 40
Kirstin L. Squint / 2013
Tonto, The Lone Ranger, and Indians in Film 54
Craig Chamberlain / 2013
“Stories of the Marvelous”: An Interview with LeAnne Howe 57
Erin Regan / 2013
It’s about Story 63
Gina Caison / 2016
viii CONTENTS
Choctaw Tales: An Interview with LeAnne Howe 75
Padraig Kirwan / 2016
Interview with Poet LeAnne Howe 90
Jeremy Reed / 2017
An Interview with LeAnne Howe 93
Rebecca Macklin / 2017
“An American in New York”: LeAnne Howe 97
Kirstin L. Squint / 2019
Episode #3: LeAnne Howe 115
CAConrad / 2019
Genre-Sliding on Stage with Playwright LeAnne Howe 131
Jen Shook / 2020
Index 153
Introduction
I’ve always wanted to be thought of as a female Will Rogers pointing out ironies
and absurdities for a bilious public. Hubris made me say this, forgive me!
—LeAnne Howe
In her 2017 interview with poet Jeremy Reed, Choctaw writer LeAnne
Howe jokingly compares herself to the famed Cherokee performer, writer,
and humorist Will Rogers. Despite her tongue-in-cheek apology, laying the
blame on “hubris,” the comparison is apt. Like Rogers, Howe was born and
raised in Oklahoma as a citizen of one of the southeastern tribes forced
westward as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (Biography). Many
of the fourteen interviews in this collection, ranging from 2002 to 2020, are
punctuated with laughter, as Howe jokes about subjects that aren’t really
funny but that she paints in a humorous light: commodification of American
Indian cultures, stereotyping of Native peoples, and even misreadings of her
own work. Jen Shook’s 2020 interview, in which she focuses on Howe’s life-
time of performance and playwriting, emphasizes the vaudevillian elements
in Howe’s writing, another connection to the famed Cherokee performer
and jokester.
Not included in this book is LeAnne Howe’s most visible interview, her
2007 appearance on Jon Stewart’s satirical news program, The Daily Show.
In this interview, Aasif Mandvi asks her questions about Chief Illiniwek,
the University of Illinois’s official fake Indian mascot, which had just been
retired after seventy years. Howe, who taught at Illinois for nine years, rep-
resented the American Indian Studies (AIS) program, a counterpoint to the
non-Native “Fighting Illini Tribesman” who defended the former mascot
while wearing orange and black face paint, presumably designed to make
him appear warlike. In her 2012 interview with David Davis in the Society for
the Study of Southern Literature Newsletter, Howe describes the fallout from
the Board of Trustees’ decision to retire the mascot on the faculty members
in the AIS program: “The American Indian Studies building on the Illinois
campus is periodically threatened. Someone calls and leaves a voicemail
ix