Leanne Howe at the Intersections of Southern and Native American Literature ― Leanne Howe's Native, Interstate, and Global South

Since the publication of her novel Shell Shaker in 2001, Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe has emerged as a central voice in twenty-first-century American literature. Known for creating complex works of fiction, poetry, performance art, and criticism that capture the complexities of Native American life, Howe deftly interrogates the histories of oppression, both cultural and linguistic, throughout the United States. The first monograph devoted to her oeuvre, Kirstin L. Squint’s LeAnne Howe at the Intersections of Southern and Native American Literature fills gaps in contemporary literary history, analyzing the intricate view of the past that Howe presents in her work and examining its deployment of Choctaw history and culture. Squint specifically investigates Howe’s engagement with issues of regionalism, gender, authenticity, performativity, American Indian literary nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. This important critical work positions Howe as a pivotal figure in the burgeoning conversation about the Native South, poised at crucial, under-examined points of contact between contemporary American Indian and southern literature.

Kirstin L. Squint is associate professor of English at High Point University.