A Listening Wind ─ Native Literature from the Southeast

A Listening Wind, a collection of translated original texts and commentary edited by Marcia Haag, highlights the large array of Indigenous linguistic and cultural groups of the U.S. Southeast. A whole range of genres and selected texts represent language groups of the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Cherokee, Koasati, Houma, Catawba, and Atakapa.
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The traditional and modern Native literature genres showcased in A Listening Wind include stories that speakers perceive to be in the past (or “fixed”), genres that have developed alongside these stories, and modern story types that have sometimes supplanted traditional tales and are now enjoying trajectories of their own. These texts have been selected to demonstrate particular literary themes and the cultural perspectives that inform them. Introductory essays illuminate how they fit into Native American religious and philosophical systems. Overall this collection discloses the sometimes hidden connections among genres as well as their importance to language groups of the Southeast.

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Marcia Haag is a professor of linguistics at the University of Oklahoma. She is the coauthor of Choctaw Language and Culture: Chahta Anumpa (2 volumes) and the coeditor of Peter Perkins Pitchlynn’s A Gathering of Statesmen: Records of the Choctaw Council Meetings, 1826–1828.
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