Inspiration found in "Words from a Bear"– a documentary film about Scott Momaday

 

“I think that we're constantly redefining the human condition. And that is, as far as I can see, the writer's subject. What is it to be human? What is it to be human here and now?”– N Scott Momaday

For this post, I wanted to share some inspirations from Scott Momaday. I'm returning to a film I watched that was presented by the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in early February in Elko, NV. This documentary film is about the life and art of Scott Momaday, titled Words from a Bear.

You can watch it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyOJIrQvkZY

This film made me cry with its adept handling of beauty and the long obstacles in the life path of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet N. Scott Momaday. He is best known for “House Made of Dawn” and a formative voice of the Native American Renaissance in art and literature.

I've been creating pairs of books that when read together shine new light on each other. For the book House Made of Dawn, I would pair the novel Home by Toni Morrison. Try reading these two books back to back and ask yourself what you understand differently in each book because of what the other book tells in story. 

Excerpted from an article in The Guardian 1/29/2024

·       “Scott was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary poet and writer. He was a singular voice in American literature, and it was an honor and a privilege to work with him,” Momaday’s editor, Jennifer Civiletto, said in a statement. “His Kiowa heritage was deeply meaningful to him and he devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially the oral tradition.”

·       House Made of Dawn, published in 1968, tells of a second world war soldier who returns home and struggles to fit back in, a story as old as war itself: in this case, home is a Native community in rural New Mexico. Much of the book was based on Momaday’s childhood in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, and on his conflicts between the ways of his ancestors and the risks and possibilities of the outside world.

·       “I grew up in both worlds and straddle those worlds even now,” Momaday said in a 2019 PBS documentary. “It has made for confusion and a richness in my life.”

·       Like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Momaday’s novel was a second world war story that resonated with a generation protesting the Vietnam war. In 1969, Momaday became the first Native American to win the fiction Pulitzer, and his novel helped launch a generation of authors, including Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Louise Erdrich. His other admirers would range from the poet Joy Harjo, the country’s first Native American to be named poet laureate, to the film stars Robert Redford and Jeff Bridges.

·       “He was a kind of literary father for a lot of us,” Harjo told the Associated Press during a telephone interview on Monday. “He showed how potent and powerful language and words were in shaping our very existence.”