CNAIS faculty Stephen Graham Jones on Transcending Stereotypes

University of New Mexico Press will publish The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion in December. Jones, who is also CNAIS Core Faculty and an English professor at CU was interviewed this month by Jenny Shank in High Country News. In the interview he talks about his work and transcending stereotypes for Native Americans:

 

High Country News: You’ve said that you “got really tired of people asking in interviews, ‘What’s supposed to be Indian about this?’ ” and that in several books you’ve disguised elements that come from Native culture.

Stephen Graham Jones: My book Growing up Dead in Texas (MP Publishing LTD, 2012) only has the word “Indian” once in it. But to me that book is so Indian. It’s the life patterns that are Indian, not the skin tone or cultural heritage. It’s a way of existing in the world, a world you don’t always plug into the way you feel that you’re supposed to. 

 

You can read the full interview here.