Quarter-acre of Heartache


Book Description

Describes the life of the Paugusset Indians of Connecticut and uses the voice of Aurelius Piper, Chief Big Eagle, to recount how their tiny reservation survived a modern legal challenge.




Secret Connecticut: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure


Book Description

Did you know that there’s a Connecticut hotel room with a real helicopter inside? Can you guess who inspired the character of Indiana Jones, who was president before George Washington, and who flew before the Wright Brothers? Find the state’s most interesting and offbeat stories in Secret Connecticut: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure. Are you interested in taking a safari or racing a chariot? Had you ever heard that Martin Luther King Jr. spent two summers in Connecticut? Included are more than eighty engaging stories that provide insight into one of America’s oldest states. Inside are tales of pirates, an underground prison, and a possessed doll. Aren’t you curious about the spectacular stained glass church that was unknowingly built in the shape of a fish by a famous architect? From the world’s smallest Native American reservation to professionally coiffed cows and a replica of Marie Antoinette’s palace, you’ll find intrigue around every corner of this small but surprising state. Author Anastasia Mills Healy brings to life the long history of intriguing people, places, and events that will fascinate even life long residents of Connecticut.




Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity


Book Description

Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, there's little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem "The Natives of America." Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Plato's profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure.




MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast


Book Description

This important engaging book records the first acquaintance of poets from American Indian and Native Siberian cultures as they come to recognize their similar cultures, life-ways, and reverence for the natural world. The poetic dialogues contain a mutual recognition of kinsmen across centuries of mutual isolation. Perhaps their chief value is the declaration of fundamental human values, expressing the authors’ deepest aspirations as spokesmen for traditional cultures. As Alexander Vashchenko concludes in his commentary, “This poetic calling-forth offers an important lesson to all of us who live from day to day, with confused priorities, without a thought to eternity; who forsake our original nature—our distant, ancient kinsman, the Bear, that mighty spirit of Mother Nature and powerful symbol of our enormous, universal nation.” The Foreword, Afterword, supplementary notes, and Editor’s Note limn the historical and biographical background that make this text a world’s first, inspiring a call for future intercontinental collaborations of indigenous writers. Contributors include Nathan Romero, Susan Scarberry-Garcia, Claude Clayton Smith, Alexander Vashchenko, James Walter, and Andrew Wiget.




Humor, Heartache & Harrowing Tales Keeping Memories Alive


Book Description

Memories of raising a pet black bear, living in a secret apartment in a city sports stadium, a loveless childhood, shooting Christmas tree lights, surviving the Depression and World War II. First person accounts of these events and many more.




Native America in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

First Published in 1996. Articles on present-day tribal groups comprise more than half of the coverage, ranging from essays on the Navajo, Lakota, Cherokee, and other large tribes to shorter entries on such lesser-known groups as the Hoh, Paugusett, and Tunica-Biloxi. Also 25 inlcludes maps.




English Teacher's Portfolio of Multicultural Activities


Book Description

Seventy-five literature-based lessons with complete reproducible reading selections, including short stories, poetry, folklore, novel excerpts, and other genres written by talented authors of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, and European descent.




Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples


Book Description

Describes the history and culture of the indigenous people of Connecticut.




Autobiographies by Americans of Color 1980-1994


Book Description

This bibliography provides extensive descriptive annotations of nearly 500 autobiographies published by Americans of color during the years 1980 and 1994. The authors of these narratives range from established writers such as Nikki Giovanni, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Richard Rodriguez to unknown writers compelled to relate their part in the civil rights movement, recall their family history as sharecroppers, recount experiences in the Japanese internment camps or in Indian boarding schools, or describe their struggle to succeed and contribute despite immense hardship and difficulty. Among these autobiographies the reader will also find those of sports celebrities, actors, explorers, and entrepreneurs. This bibliography brings together at one access point an important body of work making it possible for the reader or researcher to identify and locate these books either through booksellers or through libraries. This volume constitutes volume one of a two book series, volume two is titled Autobiographies by Americans of Color 1995-2000.