Biography luci tapahonso

Tapahonso, Luci 1953-

PERSONAL: Surname research paper pronounced "Top-pa-honso"; born 1953, bay Shiprock, NM; daughter of Metropolis and Lucille (Deschenne) Tapahonso; wed Earl Ortiz (an artist; divorced, 1987); married Bob G. Thespian, 1989; children: (first marriage) Lori Tazbah, Misty Dawn, (stepchildren) Parliamentarian Derek, Jonathan Allan, Amber Kristine.

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

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

CAREER: Writer and versifier.

University of New Mexico, City, assistant professor of English, 1987-89; University of Kansas, Lawrence, helper professor, 1990-94, associate professor advice English, 1994-99; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor of American Amerindian Studies and English, 1999—. Served on the board of board of the Phoenix Indian Sentiment, 1974; member of New Mexico Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1984-86, steering committee of Returning justness Gift Writers Festival, 1989-92; River Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1990; Phoenix Arts Commission, 1990-92; Telluride Institute Writers Forum Advisory Table, 1992—; commissioner of Kansas Study Commission, 1992-96; member of leader review boards of Blue Plateau Review, 1988-92, Frontiers, 1991-96, person in charge wicazo sa review.

MEMBER: Modern Dialect Association, Poets and Writers, Inc., Association of American Indian captain Alaska Native Professors, Habitat supply Humanity (member of board do in advance directors, 1990-94), New Mexico Genius for the Humanities, Spooner Museum of Anthropology (member of helping board, 1990-92), American Indian Collection Resource Center (member of butt of directors, 1993—).

AWARDS, HONORS: Southwest Association Indian Affairs Literature partnership, 1981; honorable mention, American Softcover Awards, 1983, for Seasonal Woman; Woman of Distinction, American Young lady Scouts Council, 1996; Woman prime Distinction, National Association of Body of men in Education, 1998; award watch over poetry, Mountains and Plains Booksellers, 1998; excellent instructor award, College of New Mexico, 1985; person's name one of the Top Corps of the Navajo Nation, Maazo magazine, 1986; New Mexico Sublime Scholar award, New Mexico Snooze of Higher Education, 1989; Appearance Creative Work fellowship, University personal Kansas, 1992; Community Enhancement playing field Cultural Exchange award, Lawrence Discipline Commission, 1993; Outstanding Native Dweller Award, City of Sacramento, 1993; Southwest Book Award, Border Reading Association, 1994, for Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing; known as an Influential Professor, Lady Jayhawks Faculty Recognition, University of River, 1994; "Storyteller of the Year," Woodcraft Circle of Native Indweller Writers, 1999.

WRITINGS:

One More Shiprock Night: Poems, illustrated by husband, Peer 1 P.

Ortiz, Tejas Art Push (San Antonio, TX), 1981.

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

A Draught Swept Through (poems), West Halt Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1987.

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

A Song for the Direction forfeited North, Helicon Nine (Kansas Municipality, MO), 1994.

Bah and Her Kid Brother, illustrated by Sam Uprightly, Jr., National Organization for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (Washington, DC), 1994.

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

Navajo ABC: Top-hole Diné Alphabet Book, illustrated unresponsive to Eleanor Schick, Macmillan (New Dynasty, NY), 1995.

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

Songs of Shiprock Fair, illustrated overtake Anthony Chee Emerson, Kiva Publication (Walnut, CA), 1999.

Also contributor thoroughly Sign Language: Contemporary Southwest Array America, Aperture (New York, NY), 1989; A Circle of Nations: Voices and Visions of Indweller Indians, Beyond Words (Hillsboro, NM), 1993; and Open Places, Genius Spaces: Contemporary Writers on honourableness Changing Southwest, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1994.

Suscriber of poems, stories, and essays to numerous publications. Contributor act upon videotape The Desert Is Negation 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 behove Navajo ancestry, and her reason of work often evokes nobleness imagery of this part disregard the country.

While a school student she became acquainted tally the acclaimed Native American penman Leslie Marmon Silko, who pleased Tapahonso's efforts at creative penmanship, and her first book fall foul of poems was published in 1981. Titled One More Shiprock Night, the work draws upon contain early childhood and Navajo ethnos in rural New Mexico.

Assorted of the selections reflect character important role of music worship the cultural traditions of probity area. Although most of prepare works use everyday language beam speech patterns, Tapahonso sometimes writes poems first in Navajo crucial then translates them into Justly. "Hills Brothers Coffee" is freshen such work, a memory hook the iconography of her pubescence and of a beloved playwright who spoke no English.

Tapahonso said in an interview clatter the Navajo Times, that she "[tries] to encourage Indian lecture to recognize their own property as far as their pin down stories."

Tapahonso's second volume of rhyme appeared in 1982 under significance title Seasonal Woman. It contains such pieces as "Listen," get in touch with which a woman is warned about marrying a man who can't sing, for lacking that ability is a metaphor quota a lack of interest essential the Navajo traditions.

A session named Leona Grey shows eject in many of the selections, a woman whom Tapahonso asserted in an interview with MELUS writer Joseph Bruchac III chimpanzee a composite character. Other rhyme address issues of violence challenging racism in the American Southwest.

Having children of her own has also had an impact correction Tapahonso's work, and in excellence interview she questioned the crude nature of her childrens' lives as Navajos in contemporary Earth.

Yet she also reflected go off she feels comfortable with that new hybrid culture experienced disrespect her children, one that silt distinctly different from her diminish upbringing, noting that when she was in school there were few contemporary Native American writers to study.

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

She further explores her interest in the rhythms of common speech in 1993's Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Classify Singing. The volume incorporated glory poet's growing interest in nobleness Navajo tongue, with selections newest both this language and Frankly. Many of them center beware Tapahonso's New Mexican roots, talented the pull she still feels toward it as an human race living several hundred miles trudge in Kansas.

Sáanii Dahataal put Tapahonso among "such writers as Satisfaction Harjo, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko as an supervisor female voice in the Inhabitant Indian literary landscape," according chance on Gretchen M.

Bataille in nobility Dictionary of Literary Biography. "The book demonstrates her versatility near maturity as a writer spell brings together the elements a selection of landscape, tradition, and humor prowl were evident in earlier works." The book contains both song and prose selections, and deals with topics including her girlhood, relatives, memories, and pets.

"This is a loving collection lady voices from the hand answer one woman," stated Yolanda Montijo in the Whole Earth Review.

In one poem, "Navajo Long Walk," Tapahonso recalls Kit Carson's scorched-earth campaign against the Navajo homeland. His offensive included slaughtering rank Navajos' livestock, destroying their crops and fruit trees, and forcing them to march three 100 miles to a reservation financial assistance four years of inadequate race, rampant disease, and death.

They were then allowed to revert to their homeland. "The rhyme dwells simultaneously in past viewpoint present, jumping time, speaking grief," advised Linda Hogan in Parabola. It reveals a depth on the way out emotion, exquisitely and simply. Tho' these tales are "simple vocation the surface," remarked Hogan, they "are enormous and resonant."

Blue Clique Rush In, published in 1997, commemorates the pleasures and unhappiness of ordinary life in metrical composition and stories.

Debbie Bogenschutz shaggy dog story Library Journal called the preventable "poignant." Although the book draws extensively from Tapahonso's Navajo blood, "these stories and poems assert to women of all cultures."

The subject of Tapahonso's 1999 lowgrade book, Songs of Shiprock Fair, is the oldest fair primacy Navajo Nation celebrates in Shiprock, New Mexico.

The story enquiry told through the expeiences intelligent a young girl and restlessness family. A reviewer for Horn Book noted that, although blue blood the gentry storyline was a bit fragile, the "abundance of sensory explain and a theme of stiff family and community bonds" be in total up for it. Carolyn Stacey of School Library Journal wrote that it is a "combination of narrative and poetry" arena considered it an "attractive .

. . supplement to books on Navajo culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Depreciatory SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

Crawford, John F. and Annie O. Eysturoy, editors, This Recapitulate about Vision: Interviews with Southwesterly Writers, New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1990.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 175: Native American Writers of the United States, Cyclone (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Farah, Cynthia, editorial writer, Literature and Landscape: Writers counter the Southwest, Texas Western Weight (El Paso, TX), 1988.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, Walk 1, 1993; December 15, 1995, p.

706; July, 1996, proprietor. 1833.

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

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

Biography books inaccuracy jrr tolkien

1254.

Horn Book, Jan, 2000, review of Songs make a fuss over Shiprock Fair, p. 69.

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

MELUS, frost, 1984, pp. 85-91.

New York Period 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, Apr, 2000, Carolyn Stacey, review take Songs of Shiprock Fair, owner. 116.

Whole Earth Review, winter, 1995, p. 22.*

Contemporary Authors, New Lessons Series