raphy, as a form of orality, can be rightly placed--in its modern
structure--in the tradition of the Indian cultural world. ¹

Thus I began my physical journey, meeting the writers at
their permanent residences or reaching them where they were
at that moment (for they do indeed travel extensively). I asked
questions, listened to their answers, and listened also to their
manner of speaking and telling, as they chiseled images and con-
cepts out of words with the very special talent their people have
for this art.

Their voice of protest, of resistance, of literary creativity, has
only in recent times begun to receive much attention from the
reading public and literary critics. If we ask ourselves, more than
twenty years after the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel House Made of Dawn ( 1968) by N. Scott Momaday, who
these writers are and how they write, the answer is first and fore-
most that the achievement of a whole generation stems from
their declaration of cultural independence. Indian novelists and
poets tell a story of their own with no parallel in world literature.

Memory, language, and storytelling tradition--so closely in-
tertwined--are crucial to them. Their personal and histori-
cal recollections map distinctive identities conveyed through a
powerful language. Words, then, are not mere referents, they are
life-giving. To use language is literally to create: "we imagine
ourselves, we create ourselves, we touch ourselves into being
with words"; "Language is a way of life. . . . by language we create
knowledge." Momaday points to the ethics of the word born of
an oral tradition. The word is a means of knowledge and experi-
ence, and it stands at the core of community life, reflecting the
ultimate act of sharing: "It seems to me that in a certain sense
we are all made of words; that our most essential being consists
in language. It is the element in which we think and dream and
act, in which we live our daily lives. There is no way in which
we can exist apart from the morality of a verbal dimension." ²

And imagination shapes new dimensions from the old. Stories
from the past merge with the present, ever changing in their
structural dynamics, ever the same in their unending continuity
in tradition. Not surprisingly, narrative architecture often takes
the form of a circular progression, as an ongoing concept rather

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