Tapahonso, Luci 1953-

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TAPAHONSO, Luci 1953-

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "Top-pa-honso"; born 1953, in Shiprock, NM; daughter of Eugene and Lucille (Deschenne) Tapahonso; married Earl Ortiz (an artist; divorced, 1987); married Bob G. Martin, 1989; children: (first marriage) Lori Tazbah, Misty Dawn, (stepchildren) Robert Derek, Jonathan Allan, Amber Kristine. Education: Participated in a training program for investigative journalism at the National Indian Youth Council; University of New Mexico, B.A., 1980, M.A., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Office—P.O. Box 210076, Harvill 430, Tucson, AZ 85721-0076. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and poet. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, assistant professor of English, 1987-89; University of Kansas, Lawrence, assistant professor, 1990-94, associate professor of English, 1994-99; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor of American Indian Studies and English, 1999—. Served on the board of directors of the Phoenix Indian Center, 1974; member of New Mexico Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1984-86, steering committee of Returning the Gift Writers Festival, 1989-92; Kansas Arts Commission Literature Panel, 1990; Phoenix Arts Commission, 1990-92; Telluride Institute Writers Forum Advisory Board, 1992—; commissioner of Kansas Arts Commission, 1992-96; member of editorial review boards of Blue Mesa Review, 1988-92, Frontiers, 1991-96, and wicazo sa review.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association, Poets and Writers, Inc., Association of American Indian and Alaska Native Professors, Habitat for Humanity (member of board of directors, 1990-94), New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, Spooner Museum of Anthropology (member of advisory board, 1990-92), American Indian Law Resource Center (member of board of directors, 1993—).

AWARDS, HONORS: Southwestern Association Indian Affairs Literature fellowship, 1981; honorable mention, American Book Awards, 1983, for Seasonal Woman; Woman of Distinction, American Girl Scouts Council, 1996; Woman of Distinction, National Association of Women in Education, 1998; award for poetry, Mountains and Plains Booksellers, 1998; excellent instructor award, University of New Mexico, 1985; named one of the Top Women of the Navajo Nation, Maazo magazine, 1986; New Mexico Eminent Scholar award, New Mexico Commission of Higher Education, 1989; Hall Creative Work fellowship, University of Kansas, 1992; Community Enhancement and Cultural Exchange award, Lawrence Arts Commission, 1993; Outstanding Native American Award, City of Sacramento, 1993; Southwest Book Award, Border Library Association, 1994, for Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing; named an Influential Professor, Lady Jayhawks Faculty Recognition, University of Kansas, 1994; "Storyteller of the Year," Woodcraft Circle of Native American Writers, 1999.

WRITINGS:

One More Shiprock Night: Poems, illustrated by husband, Earl P. Ortiz, Tejas Art Press (San Antonio, TX), 1981.

Seasonal Woman (poems), drawings by R. C. Gorman, Tooth of Time Books (Santa Fe, NM), 1982.

A Breeze Swept Through (poems), West End Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1987.

Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing (poems and stories), University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1993.

A Song for the Direction of North, Helicon Nine (Kansas City, MO), 1994.

Bah and Her Baby Brother, illustrated by Sam English, Jr., National Organization for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Washington, DC), 1994.

(Editor) Hayoolkaal: Dawn—An Anthology of Navajo Writers, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1995.

Navajo ABC: A Diné Alphabet Book, illustrated by Eleanor Schick, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1995.

Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1997.

Songs of Shiprock Fair, illustrated by Anthony Chee Emerson, Kiva Publishing (Walnut, CA), 1999.

Also contributor to Sign Language: Contemporary Southwest Native America, Aperture (New York, NY), 1989; A Circle of Nations: Voices and Visions of American Indians, Beyond Words (Hillsboro, NM), 1993; and Open Places, City Spaces: Contemporary Writers on the Changing Southwest, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1994. Contributor of poems, stories, and essays to numerous publications. Contributor to videotape The Desert Is No Lady: Women Make Movies, 1996. Member of editorial board, Blue Mesa Review, 1988-92, and Frontiers, 1991—.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer Luci Tapahonso grew up on a New Mexico farm in a family of Navajo ancestry, and her body of work often evokes the imagery of this part of the country. While a college student she became acquainted with the acclaimed Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko, who encouraged Tapahonso's efforts at creative writing, and her first book of poems was published in 1981. Titled One More Shiprock Night, the work draws upon her early childhood and Navajo roots in rural New Mexico. Many of the selections reflect the important role of music in the cultural traditions of the area. Although most of her works use everyday language and speech patterns, Tapahonso sometimes writes poems first in Navajo and then translates them into English. "Hills Brothers Coffee" is one such work, a memory of the iconography of her youth and of a beloved uncle who spoke no English. Tapahonso said in an interview with the Navajo Times, that she "[tries] to encourage Indian students to recognize their own wealth as far as their own stories."

Tapahonso's second volume of poetry appeared in 1982 under the title Seasonal Woman. It contains such pieces as "Listen," in which a woman is warned about marrying a man who can't sing, for lacking this ability is a metaphor for a lack of interest in the Navajo traditions. A character named Leona Grey shows up in many of the selections, a woman whom Tapahonso described in an interview with MELUS writer Joseph Bruchac III as a composite character. Other poems address issues of violence and racism in the American Southwest.

Having children of her own has also had an impact on Tapahonso's work, and in the interview she questioned the dissonant nature of her childrens' lives as Navajos in contemporary America. Yet she also reflected that she feels comfortable with this new hybrid culture experienced by her children, one that is distinctly different from her own upbringing, noting that when she was in school there were few contemporary Native American writers to study.

In her third collection, 1987's A Breeze Swept Through, Tapahonso returns to these themes of her background and contemporary New Mexico. She further explores her interest in the rhythms of common speech in 1993's Sáanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing. The volume incorporated the poet's growing interest in the Navajo tongue, with selections in both this language and English. Many of them center around Tapahonso's New Mexican roots, and the pull she still feels toward it as an adult living several hundred miles away in Kansas.

Sáanii Dahataal put Tapahonso among "such writers as Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko as an important female voice in the American Indian literary landscape," according to Gretchen M. Bataille in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "The book demonstrates her versatility and maturity as a writer and brings together the elements of landscape, tradition, and humor that were evident in earlier works." The book contains both poetry and prose selections, and deals with topics including her childhood, relatives, memories, and pets. "This is a loving collection of voices from the hand of one woman," stated Yolanda Montijo in the Whole Earth Review.

In one poem, "Navajo Long Walk," Tapahonso recalls Kit Carson's scorched-earth campaign against the Navajo nation. His offensive included slaughtering the Navajos' livestock, destroying their crops and fruit trees, and forcing them to march three hundred miles to a reservation for four years of inadequate food, rampant disease, and death. They were then allowed to return to their homeland. "The poem dwells simultaneously in past and present, jumping time, speaking grief," advised Linda Hogan in Parabola. It reveals a depth of emotion, exquisitely and simply. Although these tales are "simple on the surface," remarked Hogan, they "are enormous and resonant."

Blue Horses Rush In, published in 1997, commemorates the pleasures and sadness of ordinary life in poems and stories. Debbie Bogenschutz in Library Journal called the work "poignant." Although the book draws extensively from Tapahonso's Navajo ancestry, "these stories and poems speak to women of all cultures."

The subject of Tapahonso's 1999 children's book, Songs of Shiprock Fair, is the oldest fair the Navajo Nation celebrates in Shiprock, New Mexico. The story is told through the expeiences of a young girl and her family. A reviewer for Horn Book noted that, although the storyline was a bit weak, the "abundance of sensory detail and a theme of strong family and community bonds" make up for it. Carolyn Stacey of School Library Journal wrote that it is a "combination of narrative and poetry" and considered it an "attractive . . . supplement to books on Navajo culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bruchac, Joseph, Survival This Way, Arizona University Press (Tucson, AZ), 1987.

Crawford, John F. and Annie O. Eysturoy, editors, This Is about Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers, New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1990.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 175: Native American Writers of the United States, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Farah, Cynthia, editor, Literature and Landscape: Writers in the Southwest, Texas Western Press (El Paso, TX), 1988.