The Women Writers of Color Series offers enjoyable reading for an enlightened multi-ethnic audience that includes scholars and critics, poets and writers, librarians and young adults, who read both critically and for entertainment; each volume is published with a user-friendly bibliography so that the readers can pursue original works by these women authors of color and find critical writings more easily.
The Women Writers of Color Series exists for every little girl of any race whoever wrote a poem and hid it, and for every woman writer of color whose work we will never know. This series is therefore not only for the scholar and the critic, but also for the daughters of those mothers whose creativity and intelligence were suppressed or denied—daughters who went on to become poets, essayists, novelists, and activists who inspired others in the creation of artistic models with the vision for a sustainable future.
Native American people, people of color, were here when the first Europeans and Africans arrived in the Americas, living in harmony with the earth; yet, they are underrepresented in the canon of American literature. Among these, Louise Erdrich is both popular and influential, a well-known novelist, poet, memoirist, and author of children’s books. The daughter of a German American father and an Ojibwe mother, she grew up in North Dakota and attended Dartmouth College before receiving a Master of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University. To date, Erdrich has published 14 novels, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, among others. A weaver of exquisitely rich narratives, Erdrich portrays the lives of people like those she has known, people who have struggled to retain their lands and their heritage. Her novels often read as if they were being spoken in the present moment; “My girl,” she writes, “I have seen the passing of times you will never know.” In this way, Erdrich invites her audiences to participate in the creation of meaning by transforming the act of reading into one of healing.
Louise Erdrich’s triumph as a Native American and a woman of color writer is cause for celebration. We therefore welcome Tracks on a Page by Frances Washburn. Washburn, a novelist and professor of American Indian literature, is at once a scholar and a storyteller. Of Lakota/Irish/German/Anishinaabe heritage, Frances Washburn grew up on the stories of her Irish grandmother and her Lakota grandmother, “historical stories of war and peace, homely stories that conveyed human values and the consequences of behavior, both good and bad.” In addition to publishing two novels, Washburn has established her scholarly footing by publishing in American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Wicazo Sa, and Studies in American Indian Literature. In Tracks on a Page, Washburn follows Louise Erdrich’s literary tracks like a seasoned hunter, offering rare insights into a little known journey.
Joanne M. Braxton
College of William and Mary Series Editor