Waterlily

"Waterlily can be called a historical novel . The book is written from a 19th century Native woman’s perspective. Deloria thinks of herself as being a woman writer in a much more explicit way than some other writers. This book follows a character called Waterlily from the moment of her birth through adulthood. It explores the patterns of parenthood, Waterlily’s marital arrangements and the importance of kinship ties. It’s a pretty straightforward bildungsroman , but beautifully done. Deloria was part of a group of women who were trained by Anthropologist Franz Boaz to do something like auto-ethnography or to be native informants. Zora Neale Hurston was the most famous alumna of that group. But Deloria is really important too. She brings the eye of an ethnologist to this novel. That is one of the most complicated questions in the field. Deloria goes to great pains to authentically represent tribal practices. Deloria is drawn to writing fiction , in part, so she can expose a wider audience to a picture of Native life. She’s invested in ‘tradition’ (I always put traditions in quotation marks because tradition is an ongoing project). Deloria’s depiction of Waterlily’s story aligns with a historical reconstruction of Dakota tribal life. It’s a story that is much closer to the closure of the frontier than any of the other books that we’ll be talking about."