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    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer"
    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer"
    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer"
    Ebook43 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535837040
    A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Susan Power's "The Grass Dancer" - Gale

      1

      The Grass Dancer

      Susan Power

      1994

      Introduction

      The Grass Dancer grew out of a series of stories that Susan Power wrote while she was in the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. The novel was published in 1994 by Putnam and received immediate critical acclaim, and also won the 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award for best first fiction of that year.

      The book tells the story of Harley Wind Soldier, a young Sioux, and several generations of his ancestors. The novel includes non-human as well as human characters; the spirit world is an important part of all the stories, and ghosts and magical powers are part of the characters' everyday lives. Long-dead ancestors, such as lovers Red Dress and Ghost Horse, who lived in the nineteenth century and saw the first impact of European-American culture on their own, are still vital figures in Power's twentieth-century characters' lives.

      The book's title refers to a traditional Native-American dance, and there are two kinds of grass dancing. A character in the book explains: There's the grass dancer who prepares the field for a powwow the old-time way, turning the grass over with his feet to flatten it down. Then there's the spiritual dancer, who wants to learn grass secrets by imitating it, moving his body with the wind.

      I cannot tell you where characters come from, Power told Caroline Moseley in the Princeton Weekly Bulletin. They come before themes; they come before action. And they sometimes take me places I don't want to go. She told Moseley that the character of Red Dress was supposed to be evil, but when she heard Red Dress's story, she realized Red Dress had reasons for her actions. She became a heroine, the heart and soul of the book, even though she killed some people who did not deserve to die.

      When the book was published, critics praised Power's use of magic, spirits, and myth, and the way she worked them into the characters' everyday lives, showing how they perceived reality and imparting a vividly mystical quality to their often difficult existence. Dani Shapiro wrote in People Weekly that Power's book would haunt readers—and perhaps [give] them pause to check the sky for ancestors of their own. A Publishers Weekly reviewer hailed Power as a major talent, and in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Dorris praised her series of related, beautifully told tales that unravel the intricate stitch of related lives, the far-reaching consequences of chance acts, the lasting legacies of love and jealousy.

      Although Power is proud of her dual heritage, she does not want to be called a Native-American writer. She told Moseley, I think of myself as an American writer who happens to be Indian.

      Author Biography

      "My mother tells me the ancestors really wanted me to write Grass Dancer, Susan

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