Eva Gruber 
Thomas King 
Works and Impact

A comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the work of one of the foremost Native North American writers and his reception and influence.


Thomas King is one of North America’s foremost Native writers, best known for his novels, including
Green Grass, Running Water, for the
Dreadful Water mysteries, and for collections of short stories such as
One Good Story, That One and
A Short History of Indians in Canada. But King is also a poet, a literary and cultural critic, and a noted filmmaker, photographer, and scriptwriter and performer for radio. His career and oeuvre have been validated by literary awards and by the inclusion of his writing in college and university curricula. Critical responses to King’s work have been abundant, yet most of this criticism consists of journal articles, and to date only one book-length study of his work exists.
Thomas King: Works and Impact fills this gap by providing an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of all major aspects of King’s oeuvre as well as its reception and influence. It brings together expert scholars to discuss King’s role in and impact on Native literature and to offer in-depth analyses of his multifaceted body of work. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of literature, English, and Native American studies, and to King aficionados. Contributors: Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber, Julia Breitbach, Stuart Christie, James H. Cox, Marta Dvorak, Floyd Favel, Kathleen Flaherty, Aloys Fleischmann, Marlene Goldman, Eva Gruber, Helen Hoy, Renée Hulan and Linda Warley, Carter Meland, Reingard M. Nischik, Robin Ridington, Suzanne Rintoul, Katja Sarkowsky, Blanca Schorcht, Mark Shackleton, Martin Kuester and Marco Ulm, Doris Wolf. Eva Gruber is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction – Eva Gruber

Thomas King’s Abo-Modernist Novels – Marta Dvorak

‚Wide-Angle Shots‘: Thomas King’s Short Fiction and Poetry – Reingard M. Nischik

‚Turtles All the Way Down‘: Literary and Cultural Criticism, Coyote Style – Robin Ridington

Thomas King Meets Indigenous Convergent Media – Stuart Christie

Rewriting Genre Fiction: The Dreadful Water Mysteries – Julia Breitbach

‚All My Relations‘: Thomas King’s Coyote Tetralogyfor Kids – Doris Wolf

Is This the Indian You Had in Mind? The Reception of Thomas King – Renée Hulan

Is This the Indian You Had in Mind? The Reception of Thomas King – Linda Warley

‚Coyote Conquers the Campus‘: Thomas King’s Presence in Education – Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber

King’s Contestatory Intertextualities: Sacred and Secular, Western and Indigenous – Marco Ulm

King’s Contestatory Intertextualities: Sacred and Secular, Western and Indigenous – Martin Kuester

Thomas King’s Humorous Traps – Aloys N.M. Fleischmann

‚Have I Got Stories-‚ and ‚Coyote Was There‘: Thomas King’s Use of Trickster Figures and the Transformation of Traditional Materials – Mark Shackleton

‚One Good Story‘: Storytelling and Orality in Thomas King’s Work – Blanca Schorcht

Maps, Borders, and Cultural Citizenship: Cartographic Negotiations in Thomas King’s Work – Katja Sarkowsky

One Good Protest: Thomas King, Indian Policy, and American Indian Activism – James H. Cox

‚Sometimes It Works and Sometimes It Doesn’t‘: Gender Blending and the Limits of Border Crossing in Green Grass, Running Water and Truth & Bright Water – Suzanne Rintoul

Storytelling in Different Genres: A Conversation with Thomas King – Eva Gruber

Thomas King and the Art of Unhiding the Hidden – Marlene Goldman

The Truth about Thomas – Helen Hoy

Misdirection Is Still a Direction: Thomas King as a Teacher – Carter Meland

Tom King and the Dead Dog Café – Kathleen Flaherty

Dead Dog Café: Being an Indian on Air – Favel

Works by Thomas King

Selected Literary Criticism of Works by Thomas King(including Interviews)

Notes on the Contributors

Index